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Question from the peanut gallery: The gut bacteria in a cow digest components of the animal's food preferentially and excrete methane. If you knock those bacte
by asteli 7y ago
Question from the peanut gallery:
The gut bacteria in a cow digest components of the animal's food preferentially and excrete methane. If you knock those bacteria out, does the stuff the bacteria would have eaten get excreted by the cow? If so, do the organisms that digest it external to the cow emit greenhouse gases?
- stinos 7y agoI also wonder what effect this whole thing has on the cow. IIRC in humans there are even links between (lack of/bad) gut bacteria and certain diseases. So it seems at least worth it figuring ouf how this affects cows, imo.
- mklarmann 7y agoActually by knocking out the bacteria, they can see a slight uptake (5%) in feed efficiency of the cows. So part of it is put into fat and muscle.