Methane emissions measured directly from grazing livestock in New Zealand

We report measurements of methane emissions from individual ruminant livestock-both sheep and dairy cows-grazing pasture typical of New Zealand lowlands in the temperate southwest Pacific. These are the first measurements reported from grazing sheep, and among the first from grazing cattle. The measurement technique, developed at Washington State University, enables emission rates to be determined from analyses of “breath” samples collected while grazing. More than 250 measurements of daily methane emission from 50 sheep (8 months old) were made, with flock-mean emission 18.9 ± 0.8 g hd −1 d −1. Although emissions were weakly correlated with feed intake, they represented a 4.6 ± 0.1 % average loss of gross dietary energy. The corresponding mean emission based on 40 measurements of daily emissions from 10 lactating dairy cows was 263 ± 10 g hd −1 d −1, approximately 6.2% of estimated gross energy intake. A notable feature was the large inter-sheep variability in daily methane emission (factor of 1.4 range) that could not be attributed to variable intake. This would appear to suggest an appreciable diversity of methanogenetic response to digestion, and may be significant in the search for strategies to control emissions of this greenhouse gas.