STSM: Rumination time and methane emissions relationships in a multibreed dataset.

My name is Larissa Zetouni, and I’m a PhD student at Aarhus University, in Foulum, Denmark. My PhD project is entitled: Opportunities to select for low methane emitting dairy cattle.

Thanks to the METHAGENE COST action, I had the privilege to go to Wageningen University for 6 days, as a guest, working with Yvette de Haas and Gareth Difford. The aim was to analyze how rumination time in dairy cattle could influence methane production.

During my period there, lots of discussions and exchange of ideas were carried out between me and other PhD students, which was very helpful since there are people from all different fields in Animal Science. Also, lots of data editing (and struggling!) was done, and on the last day we managed to make our models convert, therefore obtaining some results to think about.

Other than work, I was lucky enough to get extremely nice weather during my stay in the Netherlands. Sunny, not windy days, with temperatures of 15 degrees were a blessing. Cycling to work every day was also a huge plus.

While there, I’ve met up with some good, old friends, and on Friday we had a nice barbecue, to celebrate the end of a tough-but-productive week ☺

I’m extremely grateful to Methagene Cost Action for the funding and the opportunity to work hard on my results.