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Published online 21 January 2009 | Nature 457, 369 (2009) | doi:10.1038/457369a
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No bull: genes for better milk
Service ups dairy farmers' chance of choosing the best bulls.
On 13 January, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched a service that allows dairy-cattle breeders to double their chances of selecting the best bulls to sire milk-producing cows.
"This is the future of animal breeding," says Juergen Richt, a veterinary surgeon at Kansas State University in Manhattan.
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The story emphasizes selecting young bulls most likely to sire good milk producers using the new bovine SNP micro array chip and suggests that the dairy industry is most interested in this figure of merit. Of the dozen traits linked to milk production, I hope one minimizes cattle flatulence, perhaps as the primary requirement, thus reducing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and enabling farmers to get into the 'carbon offsets' market. Low methane cows would be all to the good.
If by using better breeding stock, more milk can be produced by fewer cows, then we have already done a lot to reduce methane emissions.