Cow-culating your Methane — Agriculture Lessons!

One of the biggest contributors to climate change is the increasing amount of methane in the atmosphere. Some of this comes from animals on farms, including cows and sheep.

When a cow eats its dinner, it turns that into energy (just like you do). If the cow is using less energy to make burps and farts, it may be able to use that energy in other ways, like growing big and strong!

Livestock on farms contributes almost 60% of all the emissions from the agricultural sector, which is equal to about 10% of Australia’s total emissions.

It’s not cows fault they fart! But we can help to reduce the amount of methane that exits their body by changing their diet.

The CSIRO has discovered that supplementing some of a cow’s diet with seaweed will virtually eliminate their methane production! And only 1% of their diet needs to be substituted!

So, how does it work? The metabolites in the seaweed disrupt the enzymes in the cow’s rumen (stomach) which is responsible for producing methane

Also, don’t blame only their farts! Actually, much more methane is emitted from cows burping than farting!

In our game, your cow has to make a sustainable choice about what they eat — grass or seaweed. And if they choose the higher methane emitting food, they let off a little steam…

Play the game here. And find the lesson to build your own game here.

If you’re interested in learning more about Beef and methane production, here are some links to help 1, 2, 3, 4

If you’re looking for further educational resources on beef and other agriculture industries, as well as Science curriculum matching head to Primezone

And don’t miss the other coding lessons that are part of this module at codeclubau.org/projects/topics/agriculture/

All the lessons are free and matched the Digital Technologies curriculum.

Register your free Code Club and getting kids coding in your community — codeclubau.org