Bickell, S L

Robinson, Dorothy L

Toovey, A F

Goopy, John P

Hegarty, Roger

Revell, D K

Vercoe, P E

2011

Daily methane production (DMP) and 1-hour methane production (1-h MP) were measured twice, 4 weeks apart, on Merino wethers fed 'ad libitum'. This study aimed to determine the 4-week repeatability of DMP and 1-h MP as well as determine how well 1-h MP predicts DMP. After a 4-week interval, the repeatability of DMP was 0.49, while the repeatability of 1-h MP was 0.24. The correlation between DMP and 1-h MP was 0.56 for the first measurement and 0.66 for the second. It was estimated that the mean of 3 independent 1-hour measurements would be at least as repeatable as the DMP measurement. A 1-h MP measurement is a moderate predictor of DMP when sheep are fed 'ad libitum', which may occur during generous grazing conditions, and thus using 1-h MP as tool to select animals for low methane production may be feasible.

Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics, v.19, p. 415-418

9780646559155

1328-3227

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/18704

Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics (AAABG)

Four week repeatability of daily and one hour methane production of mature merino wethers fed 'ad libitum'

Conference Publication

Publication