NEWS 18 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE December 2025 Each year, a single cow can belch about 200 pounds of methane. The powerful greenhouse gas is 27 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. For decades, scientists and farmers have tried to find ways to reduce methane without stunting the animal’s growth or productivity. Recent research at University of California, Davis, US, showed that feeding cows red seaweed can dramatically cut the amount of methane that is produced and released into the environment. Until now, however, scientists did not fully understand how red seaweed changes the interactions among the thousands of microbes in the cow’s gut, or rumen. A new collaborative study by researchers at UC Davis, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) sheds light on that process and reveals which microbes in the cow’s gut might help reduce methane. The new insights bring the multidisciplinary team, composed of microbiologists, animal and computer scientists, closer to engineering the gut microbes of cows to produce less methane, offering a long-term solution that would not depend on seaweed feed additives. The study was published in Microbiome. Scientists have previously shown that red seaweed of the genus Asparagopsis blocked a key enzyme found in methane-producing microbes in the cow’s gut. Read more>> Producing vitamins for over 70 years and focused on supporting the feed industry for improved animal performance, Adisseo is now publishing the new updated version of its guide for vitamin recommendations, the Microvit® Nutrition Guide (MNG). The company highlights this new version of the Microvit® Nutrition Guide as presenting minimum and maximum recommended levels for fat soluble vitamins A, D3, E and K3, plus the hydro soluble vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, B12 and vitamin C in feed. These recommendations cover 18 different species, including poultry, swine, horses, ruminants, pets, and aquatic species, represented in 35 different developmental stages. Everything is based on technical and scientific publications from the last 30 years, supplemented by Adisseo's research in this area, and the practical experience of consultants and the feed industry, the company points out. Even though no new vitamins have been developed in the last 50 years, the need for supplementation can change over the years due to various factors, such as the animal's growth rate, the special needs of the immune system in antibiotic-free feeding situations, or even due to heat stress – a problem that strongly affects animal protein producers. Meat quality can also be improved by specific levels of certain vitamins. Other factors also affect the levels of vitamins to be added to the feed, such as the diversity of raw materials, and especially the heat treatments performed on the feed, which currently use higher temperatures and longer times, requiring compensatory doses of some vitamins. Read more>> New study may clarify how seaweed cuts cow methane Rumen-protected fats boost cow performance in winter Photo: Gregory Urquiaga / UC Davis
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