Environment – New Zealand Association of Ruminant Nutritionists

Amelia Almeida – Whenua Haumanu regenerative agriculture project

Dr. Amelia Almeida is committed to advancing sustainable ruminant production systems and enhancing feed efficiency while minimizing environmental impact. Dedicated to fostering innovation and resilience in the next generation of animal scientists at Massey University. Her current research focuses on measuring and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in ruminant production. Amelias mission is to empower students

February 19, 2025 No Comments

David Pacheco – Options for abatement of enteric methane emissions from ruminants

During this session David covered the indirect and direct options for mitigating enteric methane. Indirect options include improving feed quality and animal health for improved animal efficiency and reduction in GHG . Direct interventions act directly in the rumen to reduce methane and include options such as methane inhibitors , vaccines, feed composition and plant

September 24, 2024 No Comments

Andre Mazzetto – Life Cycle Assessment – the importance of feed in the footprint of animals

Lifecycle assessment (LCA) is a technique for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, system or service. In this session, Andre covered what different components make up an LCA and talked about the importance of accounting for full impacts as when making changing to practices one boundary may make the change

September 24, 2024 No Comments

Understanding and mitigating heat stress in NZ dairy cows – Kirsty Verhoek

Kirsty gave an overview of heat stress, measuring and mitigating heat stress and the new research in heat stress within NZ. In the summer of 2023 Dairy NZ carried out a trial reviewing heat stress, and while this was one of the wettest summer in over a decade, there was significant data including high wind

March 20, 2024 No Comments

Mycotoxins and their effect on the feed intake (a case study) – Dr. Marjan Sprock

Dr. Marjan Sprock, a registered and practising vet on the west coast, showcased a case study and the process in which she went through to diagnose a severe mycotoxin challenge. This step by step encounter was used as a case study to show the symptoms that arose, and the process taken to review and diagnose

November 1, 2023 No Comments

GHG, Nutrients and Economics, A Modelling Exercise. Offering Alternative Strategies, Helwi Tacoma

Helwi presented a piece of work he has been a part of that used modelling to look into environmental impact of grazing dairy systems and their profitability across a number of different scenarios. The same farm parameters were used for each scenario but with cow size, genetic potential and concentrate inputs varied across the scenarios

May 4, 2022 No Comments

MPI Updates Regarding Winter Cropping, Penny Timmer-Arends and Amanda Turner

MPI winter cropping update

May 5, 2021 No Comments

Sustainability of Winter Cropping and Cropping Techniques, Wayne Nichol

Emerging sustainable options for winter cropping

May 5, 2021 No Comments

Can ruminant methane be reduced by genetic selection, vaccines or feeding seaweed? Garry Waghorn

Gary discussed three methodologies currently being worked on as mitigation strategies for methane reduction: Genetics Certain sheep have been identified as having low methane emisions. These are also sheep whtat are low yielding so there is a trade-off with performance. This is explained that lower performance comes from lower VFA production so less energy for

December 10, 2020 No Comments

Overseer Modelling Case Study – Alastair Taylor

This active run through of Overseer included demo software that was not public at the time of the session. Alastair takes a step by step approach to showcase how the FM programme functions, what information to put into each section and the latest in easy to use features. Highlighting that in the “Overview” section there