Kirsty Hammond
Te Whānau-ā-Apanui
Bachelor of Science (Animal Science)
PhD Animal Science
Massey University 2011
Kirsty Hammond Cow (and Sheep) girl
Natural Gas
A milking cow produces around 400grams of methane a day on average. That doesn’t sound like much. But multiply that by the millions of cows in our pastures, and you have the equivalent energy to drive a car a looong way.
Theoretically, if the cows got together, they could stop walking, and start driving around the paddock instead, powered by their own emissions. But without the self-awareness to come up with such a scheme, cows and sheep continue to emit rather a lot of methane into the atmosphere.
That’s where Kirsty comes in. She’s working on how to better understand and get ruminants like cows and sheep to stop burping methane so much.
Kirsty’s PhD project, a joint one between ith Massey University and AgResearch, focussed on exploring methane emissions from sheep and cattle (ruminants) fed fresh-forage diets of white clover and perennial ryegrass. The idea was to look more closely at the ruminants diet, and see if certain diets produced more methane emissions (by the microbes in the ruminant gastro-intestinal tract) than other diet types.
If that can be better understood it would mean we could feed cows and sheep so they put less energy into, er, burping, and more into producing milk and meat.
That would be a win-win for the environment and for farming. Although maybe not for the cows, who will never know what it’s like to drive around the paddock.
Natural Gas
A milking cow produces around 400grams of methane a day on average. That doesn't sound like much. But multiply that by the millions of cows in our pastures, and you have the equivalent energy to drive a car a looong way.
Theoretically, if the cows got together, they could stop walking, and start driving around the paddock instead, powered by their own emissions. But without the self-awareness to come up with such a scheme, cows and sheep continue to emit rather a lot of methane into the atmosphere.
That's where Kirsty comes in. She's working on how to better understand and get ruminants like cows and sheep to stop burping methane so much.
Kirsty's PhD project, a joint one between ith Massey University and AgResearch, focussed on exploring methane emissions from sheep and cattle (ruminants) fed fresh-forage diets of white clover and perennial ryegrass. The idea was to look more closely at the ruminants diet, and see if certain diets produced more methane emissions (by the microbes in the ruminant gastro-intestinal tract) than other diet types.
If that can be better understood it would mean we could feed cows and sheep so they put less energy into, er, burping, and more into producing milk and meat.
That would be a win-win for the environment and for farming. Although maybe not for the cows, who will never know what it's like to drive around the paddock.
Kirsty Hammond
Te Whānau-ā-Apanui
Bachelor of Science (Animal Science)
PhD Animal Science
Massey University 2011
Kirsty's story
From a farm in Whakatane to internationally-significant research, Kirsty Hammond has come a long way. Today she is doing a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at The University of Reading, doing similar work to her PhD i.e looking at nutrition, diets, feeding and methane excretion.
“I am learning a lot because this work I am doing is applicable to the UK farming system which is totally different to New Zealand’s one! Imagine walking into a large covered building only to see housed in it 600 holstein friesian cows that are almost 200kg bigger than the New Zealand Holsteins (they come up to my head and I am 175 cm tall). Most of these cows are housed inside all year round and they are feed indoors. There is a huge amount of labour involved and it is a very intensive system compared to NZ where our cows are outside eating grass that grows nearly all year round.
Kirsty graduated from Massey in May 2012 and is now continuing research in the UK – check out what she is up to.
Find out more about animal science
Get started!
If you want to follow in Kirsty’s footsteps or just want to learn more about what he does all day, check out our Area of Interest page for Animal Science.
There you’ll learn more relating to what Earth Science is really all about, what kinds of careers you can get in that field, and how Massey University can help you get started down that path – just like Kirsty.