Short communication: Correlation of methane production, intensity, and yield with residual feed intake throughout lactation in Holstein cows

Abstract

The environmental impact of dairy production can be reduced in several ways, including increasing feed efficiency and reducing methane (CH₄) emissions. There is no consensus on their relationship. This study aimed at estimating the correlations between residual feed intake (RFI) and CH₄ emissions expressed in g/d methane production (MeP), g/kg of fat- and protein-corrected milk methane intensity (MeI), or g/kg of DM intake methane yield (MeY) throughout lactation. We collected CH₄ data using GreenFeed devices from 107 Holstein cows, as well as production and intake phenotypes. RFI was predicted from DM intake, fat- and protein-corrected milk, BW, and body condition score. Five-trait random regression models were used to estimate the individual variance components of the CH₄ and production traits, which were used to calculate the correlations between RFI and CH₄ traits throughout lactation. We found positive correlations of RFI with MeP and MeI ranging from 0.05 to 0.47 throughout the lactation. Correlations between RFI and MeY are low and vary from positive to negative, ranging from -0.18 to 0.17. Both MeP and MeI are favorably correlated with RFI, as is MeY during the first half of lactation. These correlations are mostly favorable for genetic selection, but the confirmation of these results is needed with genetic correlations over a larger dataset.

Keywords: Dairy cows; Feed efficiency; GreenFeed; Methane emissions; Random regression models.