Afees Ajasa - Measuring methane emissions in young bulls

2026 Dairy Symposium hosted by UW–Madison: "Measuring methane emissions in young bulls: the fast track to more sustainable dairy farming? " – Afees Ajasa, animal and dairy sciences, UW–Madison Ajasa is a postdoctoral research associate in Francisco Peñagaricano’s lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he works in quantitative genetics and statistical genomics. He earned his PhD from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), focusing on the genetic architecture of disease resistance and gill health in Atlantic salmon. His research interests include animal breeding, genomic prediction, and the application of advanced statistical methods to improve health and productivity in animal populations Project summary: Selective breeding is a promising tool to mitigate enteric methane emissions from dairy cattle. Current phenotyping efforts focus mainly on lactating cows; however, a major limitation is the ability to phenotype a large number of them. One promising alternative is to measure methane emissions from young candidate bulls. The goal of this study was to quantify methane emissions in young Holstein bulls using GreenFeed systems. Two methane emission traits were evaluated: methane production (g/d) and residual methane production (g/d), calculated as methane production adjusted for cohort, body weight and average daily gain. Methane production averaged 135 g/d, ranging from 85 to 217 g/d, and residual methane production ranged from -36 to 26 g/d. Phenotypic correlation between methane production and body weight was 0.65. Future work includes estimating genetic parameters for methane traits, and, more importantly, the estimation of genetic correlations between methane traits in young candidate bulls and lactating cows. 🌐 VISIT OUR WEBSITE: http://dairyinnovationhub.wisc.edu 👥 OUR SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/dairy_hub Facebook:   / dairyinnovationhub   LinkedIn:   / dairy-innovation-hub