Methane emission from free-ranging sheep: a comparison of two measurement methods

Methane emissions from a flock of 14, 1-year old sheep grazing on a grass and legume pasture were measured using a micrometeorological mass-balance method and a sulphur hexaflouride (SF 6 ) tracer technique. The former measured the mean emission, over 45 min intervals, from all the sheep within a fenced 24 m×24 m enclosure, from the enrichment of methane (CH 4 ) in air as it passed over the sheep. The tracer technique measured emissions from a subset of 7 individual animals over 24 h periods from measurements of CH 4 and SF 6 concentrations in air exhaled by the sheep, and from the known rate of release of SF 6 from small permeation tubes placed in the animals’ rumens. Both methods gave highly similar results for 4 out of 5 days. When the species composition of dietary intake was steady during the last two days of measurement, the mean emission rate from the mass-balance method was 11.9±1.5 (SEM) g CH 4 sheep -1 d -1 , while the rate from the tracer technique was 11.7±0.4 (SEM) g CH 4 sheep -1 d -1 . These rates are for sheep with mean live mass of 27 kg, with a measured dry matter intake of 508 g sheep -1 d -1 and pasture dry matter digestibility of 69.5%. There was close agreement between these measurements and estimates from algorithms used to predict methane emissions from sheep for the Australian National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.