Modelling the effect of diet composition on enteric methane emissions across sheep, beef cattle and dairy cows

Abstract

Enteric methane (CH4) is a by-product from fermentation of feed consumed by ruminants, which represents a nutritional loss and is also considered a contributor to climate change. The aim of this research was to use individual animal data from 17 published experiments that included sheep (n = 288), beef cattle (n = 71) and dairy cows (n = 284) to develop an empirical model to describe enteric CH4 emissions from both cattle and sheep, and then evaluate the model alongside equations from the literature. Data were obtained from studies in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia, which measured enteric CH4 emissions from individual animals in calorimeters. Animals were either fed solely forage or amixed ration of forage with a compound feed. The feed intake of sheep was restricted to a maintenance amount of 875 g of DM per day (maintenance level), whereas beef cattle and dairy cows were fed to meet their metabolizable energy (ME) requirement (i.e., production level). A linear mixedmodel approach was used to develop amultiple linear regressionmodel to predict an individual animal’s CH4 yield (g CH4/kg drymatter intake) fromthe composition of its diet. The diet components that had significant effects on CH4 yield were digestible organic matter (DOMD), ether extract (EE) (both g/kg DM) and feeding level above maintenance intake: CH4 (g/kg DM intake) = 0.046 (±0.001) × DOMD - 0.113 (±0.023) × EE - 2.47 (±0.29) × (feeding level - 1), with concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) = 0.655 and RMSPE = 14.0%. The predictive ability of the model developed was as reliable as othermodels assessed fromthe literature. These components can be used to predict effects of diet composition on enteric CH4 yield from sheep, beef and dairy cattle from feed analysis information.