Dairy Cattle and Hydrogen Emissions?

Introduction.

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What’s new in dairy science?

I have a neat and very brief article to share with you this week. The analysis was done by Dr. Hristov at Penn State and his collaborator, Dr. Susan Solomon (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). They tackled the topic of hydrogen emissions from lactating dairy cattle.

Why do we care about hydrogen emissions from dairy cattle? Because it is a greenhouse gas with a 100-year global warming potential of 12 (for comparison, methane is 28). Also, methane mitigating feed additives that suppress methane production usually increase hydrogen emissions which could reduce some of the global warming benefit of reducing methane using these feed additives.

Thankfully, cows don’t emit much hydrogen – dairy cows emit about 0.8 g of hydrogen/head/day. Hydrogen emissions increased by about 2.1% for each % decrease in methane emissions.

So a 30% decrease in methane emissions equated to a 63% increase in hydrogen emissions.

How much does this increase in hydrogen negate the effects of suppressing methane? Not much. Accounting for hydrogen emissions when providing methane mitigating feed additives only reduces the CO2eq benefits by 0.5%. So, methane inhibitors that increase hydrogen are still very effective at reducing a dairy cow’s global warming impact, even after accounting for changes in hydrogen emissions.

Read the details here: https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2024-25568

Leadership, Growth, and Development.

Do you ever go though a month, week, day, or evening and pause to realize that you don’t know why you’ve chosen to do the things you’ve been doing? Do you get to the end of the week and realize that you hadn’t accomplished what you’d hoped to? I do this more than I care to admit, and it seems to happen on a regular basis when I fall into a bit of a rut.

I think far too many of our decisions are made on sheer impulse or convenience – they are not made with any intention or goal in mind. Just pause and imagine what you’d be capable of if every choice you made had a clear reason or intention behind it. How often would you sit idle or doom scroll on your phone if you we’re being intentional with each choice? It’s tremendously rewarding to live your days with complete intention and thought

I challenge you to go through one whole day making nothing but intentional choices. Think about each little choice and why you’re doing it. If that choice serves your values or goals, then do it! If it does not serve you, don’t do it. Don’t live your life by accident – live them with intention and purpose.

Final Thoughts.

Thanks again for reading and making Some Udder Thoughts one of your intentional choices. Be on the lookout for our first Bovine Brief coming out at the end of the month – we’ll go through the major methane mitigating additives (https://thecowprof.substack.com/). The topics for the rest of the year include amino acids, animal health, and dairy management – so stay tuned!

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