Laser methane smart detector for measuring the reduction of emissions in dairy cows: a pilot study

In cattle dairy systems, the enteric methane emission represents a relevant part of total emissions as CO
2
-eq. In the next years, novel strategies are required to reduce the environmental impacts of livestock, due to the increase of dairy products consumption. So, further smart techniques are necessary to quantify the effectiveness of enteric methane mitigation strategies. Several procedures are available to estimate enteric methane emission such as: (i) respiration chamber, and (ii) GreenFeed. The Laser Methane Detector (LMD) is a hand-held device, with low purchasing and operating costs, which does not interfere with animals’ routine and behaviour. It has been initially developed to detect gas leaks in the industry sector. More recently, it has been utilized by researchers to measure the methane emissions from ruminants. An experiment was carried out to test the ability of LMD to measure the reduction of methane emissions in dairy cattle due to the supplementation with methane-reducing feed additive. Methane emitted from respiration and eructation of nine lactating cows was measured at 0.1s interval. The duration of the measurement period was five minutes per day, and it was repeated for three consecutive days in two testing periods: ex-ante and ex-post (10-weeks) the use of feed additive. with an interval of one hour on each cow. The methane detection was carried out five hours after the afternoon feeding. Preliminary results show that LMD can identify differences between testing and no differences were recorded among day of measurements. A significant reduction of 14% was recorded in total methane emission per day per cow. and that an accurate measurement of microclimatic conditions is required, due to their effect on LMD measures. Further experiments are necessary to improve the knowledge about the use of methane detector in real farm conditions and the effects of microclimatic conditions on measurements.