GreenCow

SRUC's innovative and award-winning research programme that's making a fundamental contribution to our understanding of Greenhouse Gas production by livestock and is a key facility in international efforts to reduce the impact on climate change from emissions by ruminants.

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How do we reduce the environmental impact of ruminant livestock systems whilst producing high quality human food?

SRUC's innovative and award-winning GreenCow facility is making a fundamental contribution to finding an answer to this question in order to support the UK Government and international goals of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the impact on the global climate emergency.

GreenCow Facilities

GreenCow consists of six respiration chambers which measure methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen emissions from individual cattle.

The chambers represent the gold standard in terms of measuring greenhouse gas emissions from ruminants, by allowing for controlled temperature, humidity and airflow rate environments and high resolution data capture for accurate emission calculation. Each chamber is also equipped with feed bins on weigh cells to measure individual feed intake to allow for accurate calculation of methane per kilogram of dry feed intake.

Alongside the respiration chambers are an additional six training pens which are identical to pens found within the chambers and allow the animals to acclimatise to their surroundings and familiarise themselves with what they're gong to encounter whilst they are in the chambers.

Both the training pens and chambers have been developed to the highest specifications in terms of animal welfare with sizing to meet Home Office requirements and free access to feed and water.

GreenCow research

Current research in the GreenCow facility focuses on three key areas:

Breeding for low methane emission cattle: There is high genetic variation for methane production. Therefore, by selecting cattle that produce less methane, without compromising on productivity, we can drive down average emissions with every generation. We are using GreenCow to verify the potential of selective breeding for low emissions.
Dietary manipulation: Ruminants are designed to consume high-fibre diets, however these are associated with high methane emissions. Feed products with methane suppressing properties may provide a short- to medium-term solution to reduce enteric methane emissions. GreenCow has been used to test the efficacy of methane suppressing feed products.
Developing proxies for methane emissions: Measuring methane emissions in respiration chambers is highly accurate, but low throughput. Development of high-throughput, lower cost proxy measures which can be deployed on commercial farms will generate large datasets to improve models and allow emission reductions to be verified on farm. We have been developing/verifying methane proxies in Greencow, most notably the composition of the rumen microbiome.

Coming soon: UltraGreenCow

With significant investment from UKRI-BBSRC in Autumn 2025 the respiration chamber facility will have increased gas measurement capacity for ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions, and more efficient environmental control equipment.

As well as ruminant studies, this upgrade opens the facility up for use in simulated slurry storage studies and potentially monogastric studies (e.g. poultry and pigs).

We can facilitate access to the UltraGreenCow facility for commissioned or collaborative research. We encourage anyone who has a research need or idea to contact the Beef and Sheep Research Centre team using the link to our contact form below.

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