What does it say about you when your colleagues send you articles like this, Greening the herds, with the suggestion "perfect for your blog" [answer below]?
Since January, cows at 15 farms across Vermont have had their grain feed adjusted to include more plants like alfalfa and flaxseed — substances that, unlike corn or soy, mimic the spring grasses that the animals evolved long ago to eat.
As of the last reading in mid-May, the methane output of Mr. Choiniere’s herd had dropped 18 percent. Meanwhile, milk production has held its own.
The program was initiated by Stonyfield Farm, the yogurt manufacturer, at the Vermont farms that supply it with organic milk. ...
I average 4-6 cups of lowfat Stonyfield yogurt each week.
Sweetening cow breath is a matter of some urgency, climate scientists say. Cows have digestive bacteria in their stomachs that cause them to belch methane, the second-most-significant heat-trapping emission associated with global warming after carbon dioxide. Although it is far less common in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it has 20 times the heat-trapping ability.
Frank Mitloehner, a University of California, Davis, professor who places cows in air-tight tent enclosures and measures what he calls their “eruptions,” says the average cow expels — through burps mostly, but some flatulence — 200 to 400 pounds of methane a year.
What must one pay to find a lab assistant to work the air-tight tents? And here is a field experiment for the environmental economists: conduct a real vs stated preference willingness to pay study in air tight tents with regular cows and Stonyfield cows.
Answer: it says that there is a certain level of immaturity involved.
