Greener Cows: Farmers change their cows’ diets to reduce burps, source of greenhouse gas

Many years ago I putted into the Grange Hall aboard an ancient Allis Chalmers tractor - at 12 or 13 years old I was far to young to drive it on highways but I could always talk my way out of it. I figured. I risked it because the occasion promised entertainment as “government men” were going to propose putting methane traps on the rear ends of dairy cow.

I was late having had to herd a recalcitrant cow to the barn yard where she definitely didn’t want to go. As I crunched through the snow laughter erupted and I entered in time to see a neighbor toppling backwards off his folding chair amid tearing eyed, raucous gaffawing.

The government man had just shown his federal cow fart filter sending the place into hysterics and him out into the snow.

Now, according to AP,  with farmer’s price of milk falling Vermont dairy farmers mindful of shrinking their carbon footprint, are changed their cows’ diet to reduce the amount of gas the animals emit to limit dairy cows’ contribution to global warming.

They say they can reduce the cows’ intestinal methane by feeding them flaxseed, alfalfa, and grasses high in Omega 3 fatty acids. The gas cows belch is the dairy industry’s biggest greenhouse gas contributor, researchers say -most of it emitted from the front and not the back end of the cow proving those government wrong all those years ago. Now if you have ever been in a dairy barn for more than 5 minutes you might dispute those research results.

At any rate it is said the dairy industry contributes about 2 percent to the country’s total greenhouse gas production. Most of it comes from the cow, the rest from growing feed crops for the cattle to processing and transporting the milk.

To satisfy consumers’ demands for “sustainable” production, dairy farmer associations are looking at everything from growing feed crops to how milk is truck to reduce the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. That would be the equivalent of removing about 1.25 million cars from U.S. roads every year.

An enduring legacy of all this is the idea of collecting all that flammable methane gas - some way or other - and producing electricity from methane gas. Belief me I am all for reducing cow burps and flatulence but for far more practical reasons.