Rumen Microbiome Essay

There is a pricey way to lower the methane in our atmosphere. The author, Bill McKibben, says a solution to reducing methane is by having the cows become free-range. According to him, a way to reduce the pollution would require the cows to also become grass-fed. The cows will eat grass and drop their manure,

An example of those are carnosic acid, rosmarinic acid and caffeic acid, possessing strong antioxidant, radical-scavenging, and antibacterial activities. The majority of the phenolic acids in Sage species are derivatives of caffeic acid which is the building block of a variety of plant metabolites. Caffeic acid plays a central role in the biochemistry of the Lamiaceae plants, and occurs mainly in a dimer form as rosmarinic acid. Carnosic acid and rosmarinic acid, which are present at high concentrations in the extract of Sage plants, have shown strong antioxidant properties. Ursolic acid, also a component of sage, has strong anti-inflammatory properties, and in sage preparations, it is considered as a quality control measurement for the anti-inflammatory effects of different

Manufacture of meat - laden co2 and methane, and requires alot water. Farm animals such as cow or goats is the largest producer of methane. When they digest their food, the FAO of the UN mentioned the meat production accounts for 18 global warming, bigger than on the contributions of the entire world's

Cow patties that have beetles in them released less methane than cow patties that had no beetles in them.

Summary: Imagine a cow polluting our atmosphere all the time? It is a very real possibility. According to the article, “Methane emissions from cattle”, cows produce anywhere from 250 to 500 liters of Methane per day. Although they aren’t currently polluting as much as cars, that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually. Many might think that cows emit more methane gas from flatulence (or farting) but they actually emit more from belching. (1)

It is predicted that by the year 2100, Earth’s surface temperature will be more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it was in 1900. Recent studies have shown that cow flatulence is a contributing factor of global warming. In the process in which cows digest their food, they store it in the first chamber of their stomach. Soon after in their rumen, where four thousands microbes live, methane is created. The cow then farts the methane out. Danish scientists have found that one cow alone can produce enough methane a year to do the same greenhouse harm as four tons of CO2, commonly known as carbon dioxide. With the help of genetic engineering, scientists now have the ability to create genetically modified cows that fart less. Now farmers will

The gut microbiota consists of bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoans, often belonging to the phyla of Frimicutes, Bacteroides, Actinobacteria, and Protebacteria (3). Although, more than a thousand different bacteria are found in the human intestine, only 150 to 170 species are common between different individuals, so microbiotas are specific for each individual (4). Imbalance in the symbiosis of digestive tract microbiotas (dysbiosis) can occur in a variety of ways, including dietary

For ruminant animals such as cow and carabao, it is widely established that the formation of methane results in a loss of energy available for the host. Thus, a highly dense and diverse methanogen community as observed in fecal samples may also suggest an energy loss, which may consequently affect energy metabolism and body fat mass formation. Methanogens of the ruminants such as cow and carabao can be found in the gut. The bacteria found in the rumen of these ruminants are Methanobrevibacter ruminantium and Methanomicrobium mobile. The importance of this methanogens in the atmosphere is responsible for CH4 (Methane) found in the marsh. In wetlands, the methane are generated and called marsh gas. In marshes, the bacteria found include: Methanosarcina

The animals (like ruminants, pseudo-ruminants and non ruminant herbivores) fed primarily on plant based feeds have a limitation in hydrolyzing lignocellulose and result in synthesis of higher methane in the gastro-intestinal tract of animals. During fermentation of these feeds to volatile fatty acids, which serve as an energy source for the animals, hydrogen and carbon dioxide are produced as by-products which get converted to methane. The diversification of the rumen/stomach contents by use of feed additives (microbial, chemical and plants containing secondary metabolites) might change the fermentation process and reduce methane emission considerably. The microbial feed additives like anaerobic fungi and some of the bacteria,

Although many people assume the main cause of greenhouse gasses is the burning of fossil fuels, the main contributor is actually methane emissions produced by livestock. Animal agriculture produces 18% of the total

Sustainability is an issue the whole world is facing but in particular it is become a big problem in the livestock industry. Greenhouse gases are the cause and in order to preserve the planet for future generation’s changes must be made. Methane is the greenhouse gas which produced by livestock. Methane is approximately 30 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide as it is a heat trapping gas. If sustainability needs the achieved in the Livestock industry than the issue of methane must be taken care of sooner rather than later.

The impacts of livestock on global climate change are important to the health of the ecosystem because it causes the average global temperature to increase. Livestock contributes to the majority of methane emitted into the atmosphere because of the feces it produces. The growing population increase is not helpful to this matter because as a result, a demand of food arises. This demand for food also includes the demand for livestock because it is appropriate for the human diet. “Meat production is to double from 229 million tonnes in [2000] to 465 million tonnes in 2050” (McMichael et al. 1259). The methane emission rate is bound to increase because it is “dependent upon the population size of the [livestock], their productivity, and [handling system]” (Jose et al. 3).

The FAO report, ‘Greenhouse Gas Emissions From the Dairy Sector: a Life Cycle Assessment,’ estimates that the global dairy sector contributes four percent of total global anthropogenic GHG emissions. This figure includes emissions allotted to milk production, processing and transportation, and the emissions from fattening and slaughtering dairy cows. By and large, methane is the most troubling GHG produced by dairy cattle as it has the ability to trap up to 100 times more heat into the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Around 52 percent of the GHGs produced by dairy is methane. It is estimated that cows produce between 250 and 500 liters of methane a day. Going back to our dairy factory farm with 700 cows, that is up to 350,000 liters or 325,500 pounds of methane pumped into the atmosphere every day.(Chavez.2016)

Ruminants are a group of mammalian herbivores – including cows, goats, and deer – that ferment their nutrients in a specialized stomach prior to digestion. This organ is called a rumen, and is host to millions of bacteria, protists, and fungi. A calf is born with a sterile rumen and microbial populations are introduced in the days following birth through exposure to the environment, consuming forage, and interactions with its mother. A typical rumen population is established around 2 weeks after the calf begins to intake dry matter and forage. Each of these organisms found in the rumen play a role in breaking down the various types of plant material the ruminant ingests. The rumen maintains a neutral pH so the microbes it contains can thrive and effectively break down anything the animal eats. These microbial populations exhibit a type of community succession based on seasonality and availability of different food sources; various microbes thrive when certain types of foods are being consumed and that same type of food can cause other microbe populations to die off. Deer for example, rely on woody food in the winter, greenery in the spring, and acorns in the fall. The rumen adjusts the bacterial populations to those suited to best digest whatever type of material is being consumed. Many of microbes in the rumen are digested and passed on to the next part of the digestive tract with the cow’s food. The microbes maintain their populations in the rumen by having a

This study established a model in cattle whereby methanogens were directly inhibited in a dose dependant manner and the subsequent responses in rumen microbial metabolism were evaluated. The three levels of CCD, low, medium and high, reduced CH4 production by approximately 14, 37 and 55%, respectively with both diets compared to the control period, and feed intakes were not affected. Conversely H2 expelled by treated animals showed a dose-dependent increase as CH4 decreased. A similar inverse relationship between CH4 reduction and H2 loss has been reported in dairy cows treated with nitrate or 3-nitrooxypropanol, and goats fed the CH4 inhibitor BCM (Mitsumori et al., 2012; Hristov et al., 2015; Veneman et al., 2015). However, importantly this study showed that greater amounts of H2 (1.7 – 2.9 fold; g/kg DMI) were expelled in animals supplemented with the hay:concentrate diet compared to the hay only diet. Furthermore the amount of H2 expelled in the CH4 inhibited animals was lower than the predicted amount of H2 not used for hydrogenotrophic CH4 formation (4 moles of H2/mole CH4). This suggests that significant amounts of H2 were redirected into reduced end products and perhaps microbial protein. Interestingly the rumen microbiota in the roughage hay fed animals appeared to utilise more H2 that was available from the reduction in CH4 formation than the hay:concentrate fed cattle, possibly due to the slower fermentation rate of the hay diet compare with the