A note on dairy cow behavior when measuring enteric methane emissions with the GreenFeed emission monitoring system in tiestalls

Abstract

Changes in the environment or novel procedures can result in altered cow behavior during data collection; training is often recommended to ensure accurate data is being recorded. Currently, little is known regarding the habituation of dairy cows during methane emission testing with the GreenFeed emission monitoring system (C-Lock Inc., Rapid City, SD), or how behavior relates to enteric methane emission measurements. Methane emissions were estimated from a total of 202 Holstein dairy cows (120–150 d in milk) housed in tiestalls as part of a larger project. Cows were tested on d 0 (training day) and d 1–5 (test day) for approximately 10 min, during which behavior was recorded by a trained observer. While cows spent more time with their head outside of the machine on the training day (d 0) than during the test days (d 1–5), the opposite pattern was observed for the number of leg movements. No differences in estimated methane production were found over the different days, though it was negatively correlated with both behaviors. These results highlight the importance of habituation of dairy cows to the GreenFeed system for methane measurements to minimize changes to cow behavior under tiestall conditions, whereas the methane emissions themselves are less affected. However, further research is needed to determine the impact of cow behavior on the reliability and repeatability of methane emission measurements as it may introduce bias in genetic evaluations for methane efficiency.