People are paying attention to dairy cows in a way you wouldn’t expect—by analyzing their burps. It may sound strange, but at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, groundbreaking research is using high-tech tools to track the gases cows emit and what that means for both their health and the environment. UW-Platteville’s School of Agriculture is advancing dairy science through innovative research led by Dr. Ryan Pralle, Assistant Professor of Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Sciences. He says the research they’re doing is transforming the future of dairy farming.

“My research program is focused on automated milking systems and leveraging them as a nutrition tool for dairy cows. Our main interest is to see how we can precisely feed these cows through the automated milking systems and what ramifications that has on the cow’s productivity, efficiency, and sustainability.”

A key component of this research is the use of GreenFeed technology, a tool that tracks greenhouse gas emissions from cows and offers valuable insights into their health and nutrition.

“The GreenFeed is a big green box that the cows can voluntarily visit through the day, much like they visit the automated milking system, and when they walk up to it, the box recognizes who she is, and if she has permission, it drops a little bit of feed for her. And while she’s waiting there, munching, she’s exuding, burping gas through her nose and mouth, and a pipe in the box pulls it up and runs it through an analyzer to measure four different gasses: methane, hydrogen, CO2, and oxygen.”

He talks about what that information shows researchers.

“So by her visiting multiple times a day, we get a really good sample of how much gas she is using or expelling from her mouth, and that gives us some insight on what the chemistry of the rumen is, how much fermentation is going on, and the profile from rumentation. Obviously, by measuring CO2 and methane, we’re directly getting an idea of greenhouse gasses that could be emitted that can relate to her productivity and efficiency. But we also get some information about the cow’s energetics, and with the oxygen and CO2 data, see what she might be metabolizing, what energetic state she might be in, and that gives us more and more insights into this precision nutrition format, making sure we’re matching the needs of the cows with our individually-tailored feeding program.”

Pralle talks about how he’ll figure out the impact of this study.

“We’re constantly monitoring these emissions. What we’re comparing it to is we have multiple treatments going on in our research pen, where we are going to be comparing different nutritional interventions as well as management strategies and see how they relatively affect the gas emissions, the energetic metabolism of the cow, and see if we’re making some pretty significant impact.”

With a focus on automated milking systems and dairy cow nutrition, Dr. Pralle’s team aims to enhance cow productivity, efficiency, and sustainability.