Squelching Bovine Belching With The Right Ingredient

Transcript

When you think of the big greenhouse gas creators, you probably think of cars. But farm animals pollute the air too. A professor at Penn State University Park may have found just the right "ingredient" to make cows a little "greener." WPSUís Emily Reddy reports.

[feeding noise]

REDDY: It's feeding time at an experimental dairy barn not far from Beaver stadium. A big square machine on wheels spits a pile of hay in front of each cow on one side of the barn, and a young man pours a bucket of dried green leaf bits on top.

HRISTOV: So basically, now we are putting the oregano with the feed

REDDY: Professor Alex Hristov gestures toward Chan Hee Lee, a lab assistant holding a now-empty bucket. As the feeding machine finishes up and rolls out of the barn[sound], Hristov says they tried a lot of things before they found oregano reduced cows' methane output.

HRISTOV: We started with essential oilsÖLavender, mint. Citrus, onion, anything, you name it.

REDDY: And if you're picturing cows being fed hay spiked with orangesÖ.and then put in a big glass box to trap their gases Ödon't. Hristov says these early tests were done on cow stomach juices in the lab.

HRISTOV: We cannot test 200 or 500 or 100 even compounds on cows. That's why we do these tests in the lab, first. This is what we call a screening test.

REDDY: So why is Hristov focused on cutting methane? Well, while burning fuel for transportation or powering homes and businesses are the biggest culprits, farm animals create greenhouse gases, too. And they're especially big producers of methane. So cutting cow methane emissions helps the environmentÖAbout a fifth of methane produced in the United States comes from cows.

And as an important side note, cutting methane actually means more milk.

HRISTOV: In the trial we've conducted here, there was three pounds increase in milk yield, which can be explained easily by reduced methane. So if we save energy from methane, that energy can go into milk.

REDDY: In all, Hristov and his crew tested more than 200 plants, essential oils, and compounds before they discovered the impact of oregano.

HRISTOV: And the oregano was the one that consistently came on top with reducing methane, but not affecting fermentation, because thatís critical.

REDDY: It's critical that fermentation continue in the cow's stomach because without it cows wouldn't be able to digest food. Some of the substances Hristov tested cut down on methane output, but they also cut fermentation. To make sure that's not happening with the oregano in the live animal tests, Hristov's team takes regular samples from the cowís stomachs.

ACTUALITY: So now you're going to reach in there? Yeah. [plastic noise]

REDDY: It's two hours after the feeding and Chan Hee Lee has changed into blue coveralls. He thrusts his arm, covered in plastic, into a hole in the side of the cow called a cannula. It's basically a little porthole into the cow's stomach.

LEE: You've never seen this done, huh?

REDDY: Hristov watches as Lee scoops a few cups of stomach content, called rumen, out of each cow.

ACTUALITY: We want to make sure that we don't effect negatively anything else, but just drop the methane down. It would be nice if we improve fermentation, increase digestibility, for example.

REDDY: A different test tomorrow will measure methane levels. There's still no box to put the cow in to collect gasesÖ.which mostly come in the form of belches, by the way. [cow belch?] Instead theyíll suck the gases out through a tube and put them in a vacuum bottle for testing.

Hristov says the end goal is not to feed oregano to millions of cows.

HRISTOV: I don't know if feeding oregano to 9 million cow in the US is going to be practical. The end goal is to see what in the oregano has this effect..compoundsÖuse these compounds to inhibit methane.

REDDY: So far Hristov has found methane reductions of 40 percent with oregano. There aren't currently any limits on methane production by livestock. But there are laws capping nitrogen runoff from farms. And Hristov says he expects methane restrictions are on the way. He hopes his research will help prepare farmers if and when those regulations are imposed.

I'm Emily Reddy, WPSU.