Effect of feeding strategies on methane mitigation and health parameters in individual dairy cows

Many strategies are currently explored within the dairy sector to reduce enteric methane (CH4) production by adding CH4 reducing compounds to the ration and by applying adaptations to the ration. However it is not clear how effects of different CH4 reducing strategies differ under different circumstances.

Different circumstances include interactions with different types of rations, e.g. a grass silage based ration or a corn silage based ration. Furthermore, different circumstances also include rumen health status. Subclinical acidosis (SARA) is a condition which occurs in high producing dairy cows. Although it is known that animals which have a lowered average rumen pH also produce less CH4, it remains unclear how different CH4 reducing feeding strategies interact with these different states of rumen health status. Next to effects of CH4 reducing strategies in different circumstances, there is also still a gap of knowledge in how individual animal characteristics are related to CH4. It is difficult to predict on-farm CH4 production of individual animals, since individual animal variability is high. Therefore this project aims to generate more knowledge on 

1) The effect of different new CH4 reducing strategies while feeding different types of rations and in differing rumen health conditions. 

2) The associations between CH4 emissions and individual cow characteristics, with the ultimate aim to understand variations in CH4 production and predict methane emissions.