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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Madison, Wisconsin » U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center » Dairy Forage Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #310314
Title: Mitigating GHG emissions in dairy production

Author
item Powell, Joseph
item AGUERRE, MATIAS - University Of Wisconsin

Submitted to: ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/28/2014
Publication Date: 11/2/2014
Citation: Powell, J.M., Aguerre, M.J. 2014. Mitigating GHG emissions in dairy production. ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting Abstracts. Paper No. 85170. Available: https://scisoc.confex.com/scisoc/2014am/webprogram/Paper85170.html

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Comprehensive inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation options for animal agriculture have been published recently. For dairy production systems, management option include (1) manipulation of dietary components (e.g., forages, concentrates) and use of feed additives (e.g., oils, tannins) to reduce enteric methane (CH4), and (2) methods to collect, process, store and land spread manure to abate CH4 and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from dairy barns, manure storages and soils. After a brief review of recent practice inventories, we will focus on some dairy nutrition factors that impact GHG emission. For example, altering the supply and source of non-cell wall and cell wall carbohydrates in dairy cow diets lead to substantial changes in CH4 production: decreasing forage level from 68 to 47% of dry matter intake (DMI) has little impact on performance but reduces both daily CH4 emission and CH4 emission per unit of milk. A large substitution of alfalfa silage with corn silage does not have a profound impact on milk production or CH4 emission, but fermentation of fiber in corn silage yielded substantially more CH4 than the fermentation of fiber in alfalfa silage. Genetic selection for feed efficiency is a potential tool to reduce enteric CH4: cows with higher gross feed efficiency have lower CH4 emission per unit of milk than low gross feed efficiency cows. The urea contained in dairy cattle urine is the principal source of ammonia (NH3) and N2O emission from dairy farms. Our recent analyses found that milk urea nitrogen (MUN) may be used to not only evaluate feed N use efficiency (the proportion of feed N transformed into milk N), but also urinary urea N excretion, and NH3 and N2O emissions from dairy farms. Expansion of economic optimum fertilizer N rate (EONR) guidelines to include environmental outcomes can greatly reduce N2O emissions from soils.