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Effects of forage composition and growing season on methane emission from sheep in the Inner Mongolia steppe of China

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Ecological Research

Abstract

Understanding the effects of dietary composition on methane (CH4) production of sheep can help us to understand grassland degradation resulting in an increase of CH4 emission from ruminant livestock and its resulting significance affecting CH4 source/sink in the grazing ecosystem. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of forage composition in the diet of sheep in July and August on CH4 production by sheep in the Inner Mongolia steppe. The four diet treatments were: (1) Leymus chinensis and Cleistogenes squarrosa (LC), (2) Leymus chinensis, Cleistogenes squarrosa and concentrate supplementation (LCC), (3) Artemisia frigida and Cleistogenes squarrosa (AC), and (4) Artemisia frigida, Cleistogenes squarrosa and concentrate supplementation (ACC). CH4 production was significantly lower in July than in August (31.4 and 36.2 g per sheep-unit per day, respectively). The daily average CH4 production per unit of digestive dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) increased by 10.9, 11.2 and 42.1% for the AC diet compared with the LC diet, respectively. Although concentrate supplementation in both the AC and LC diets increased total CH4 production per sheep per day, it improved sheep productivity and decreased CH4 production by 14.8, 12.5 and 14.8% per unit of DM, OM and NDF digested by the sheep, respectively. Our results suggested that in degraded grassland CH4 emission from sheep was increased and concentrate supplementation increased diet use efficiency. Sheep-grazing ecosystem seems to be a source of CH4 when the stocking rate is over 0.5 sheep-units ha−1 during the growing season in the Inner Mongolia steppe.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was supported by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (90211017), the Chinese Academy of Sciences Innovative Project (KSCX2-SW-107) and the Sino-German cooperation program (DFG research group 536 MAGIM). The authors gratefully acknowledge the technical assistance of X.M. Zhang, S.G. Jin, S.G. and S.Q. Wu. We also thank the farm staff at the research station for their care of the animals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Grassland, China Agricultural University, No. 2 Yuanmingyuan West Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100094, China

    Chengjie Wang & He Zhou

  2. Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Xining, 810008, China

    Shiping Wang

  3. Institute of Animal Nutrition, Physiology and Metabolism, Kiel University, Kiel, 24098, Germany

    Thomas Glindemann

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  1. Chengjie Wang
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  2. Shiping Wang
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  3. He Zhou
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  4. Thomas Glindemann
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Correspondence to He Zhou.

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Shiping Wang and He Zhou contributed equally to this work.

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Wang, C., Wang, S., Zhou, H. et al. Effects of forage composition and growing season on methane emission from sheep in the Inner Mongolia steppe of China. Ecol Res 22, 41–48 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-006-0191-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-006-0191-9

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