Herds of cows producing skimmed milk could soon be roaming our pastures, reports Cath O’Driscoll in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Scientists in New Zealand have discovered that some cows have genes that give them a natural ability to produce skimmed milk and plan to use this information to breed herds of milkers producing only skimmed milk.

The researchers also plan to breed commercial herds producing milk with the unique characteristics required to make a butter that is spreadable straight from the fridge. They have already identified a cow, Marge, with the genes required to do this and say a commercial herd is likely by 2011. The milk is very low in saturated fats and so should be high in polyunsaturates and monounsaturated fats.

Experts say that the discovery of these rogue milkers could completely revolutionise the dairy industry. Ed Komorowski, technical director at Dairy UK says that the New Zealand approach could be used to breed cows that still produce full-fat milk but with only the good fats, which could swing things back in favour of full-fat milk. In the UK, for example, only 25% of milk sold is full fat. ‘In future if whole milk can be made to contain unsaturated fats – which are good for you – then it might mean that people change back to whole milk products. The big thing about dairy products is taste, so this would be a way of giving the benefits of taste without the disadvantage of saturated fats,’ according to Komorowski.

This may also overcome the problem of waste. ‘If you can genetically produce milk without fat then that may turn out to be a very good solution to what might later be a big disposal issue,’ says Komorowski. Producing skimmed and semi-skimmed milk means there is a lot of fat left over.

Komorowski noted, however, that although the lower-fat milk may be healthier, it will be interesting to see how much milk the cows actually produce.

The rogue cows were discovered when biotech company ViaLactia screened the range of milk compositions across the entire herd of 4m New Zealand cattle. New Zealand dairy firm Fonterra has already made milk products from Marge’s milk and they maintain the positive taste.

Police in Sanford stumbled onto an unusual case Friday morning.

Officers were on the trail of a bovine bandit, WESH 2 News reported.

Whether it was on the hunt for a midnight snack or just plain bored, the restless cow was on the move in Seminole County.

It began around midnight, when the cow somehow got outside a fence at state Road 46 and Richmond Avenue. It wandered into the road and into the path of a driver.

“I just didn’t want to hit him, you know. I was more worried about the cow than I was my truck. No reason to hurt something innocent, you know,” Neil Roberts said.

Roberts notified two Sanford police officers, who were at the scene of a carjacking down the road.

“It could be deadly. I mean a cow is an animal, it’s huge, a lot of mass, a lot of weight there. It could be deadly if a car were to hit a cow,” Sanford Police Department Sgt. Dave Morgenstern said.

The officers worked with a Seminole County sheriff’s deputy to get the cow back inside the fence, and it wasn’t long until the cow came home.

FIREFIGHTERS were called to Higham today to help free a young bull which had its head stuck in a tree.

The bull’s legs had also become entangled in barbed wire at Little Grange Farm in Hadleigh Road about 9.30am today.

The animal had put its head in the fork of a tree but because it was entangled in wire could not pull itself out again.

A fire crew from Hadleigh used bolt croppers to free the animal and it was released by 11am.

Attempts to tackle global warming have until now mostly focussed on reducing our reliance on hydrocarbons. Now scientists in Germany are working on a new pill to reduce harmful methane emissions from cows.

A pill that stops cows from breaking wind and burping has been developed by German scientists.

The breakthrough could be a major contribution to reducing global warming as the methane gas produced by cows and other ruminants is believed to be responsible for 4 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Developed by scientists at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, the pill works by transferring energy in the methane produced when a cow digests grass and using it to boost the cow’s metabolism. The energy from the fermentation process is instead used to produce glucose rather than being passed as wind.

Combined with changes to the cow’s diet and strict feeding times, the research team claims that the chemical changes induced by the pill will reduce the amount of methane produced by cows and should also lead to the cows producing more milk.

The research team was lead by professor of animal nutrition Winfried Drochner, who says the tablet — which is still being tested — will be good for the well-being of our bovine friends as well as boosting agricultural production and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientists are now focussing their attention on how to get cows to swallow the fist-sized pill. According to Dr Drochner the pill needs to be large as it dissolves slowly in the cow’s stomach, releasing active ingredients over several months.

A dairy cow nearly upstaged Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart on Friday.

Navajo Elementary School pupils snared a visit from Leinart, the grand prize from a statewide breakfast contest sponsored by the Dairy Council of Arizona.

But it was Daisy the Dairy Cow that caused a mob scene among pupils minutes before Leinart’s appearance.

Leinart, a 2004 Heisman Trophy winner, spoke to about 80 pupils about the importance of nutrition and healthful eating.

He also answered questions, revealing that he drank at least three glasses of milk daily as a child and that he used to be a Raiders fan, but “I don’t like them anymore,” he said.

One student asked what Leinart liked to do for fun.

“I’m learning to play the piano,” he said.

But Leinart garnered the most cheers after sharing that he loved playing video games.

Lily Avalos, 8, sat with a group of shrieking and giggling girls on one side of the cafeteria.

“I really like football,” Lily said afterward. She’s a Cardinals fan and even knew that Leinart grew up in Santa Ana, Calif.

Lily had Leinart autograph her arm in permanent marker.

“Most of my friends thought he was cute,” she said. “I guess they’re right.”

Home-buyers of tomorrow could find themselves walking across floors made from manure.

That’s no cow pie-in-the-sky dream, according to researchers at Michigan State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

They say fiber from processed and sterilized cow manure could take the place of sawdust in fiberboard, which is used to make everything from furniture to flooring to store shelves.

And the resulting product smells just fine.

The researchers hope it could be part of the solution to disposing of the 1.5 trillion to 2 trillion pounds of manure produced annually in the United States.

The concept has its skeptics.

“Is this something you’re going to bring into the house?” asked Steve Fowler, an economist with the Composite Panel Association, a fiberboard-makers trade group based in Gaithersburg, Md.

Farmers traditionally use manure to fertilize their fields. But as the scale of farms has grown — with more and more animals densely concentrated in a single location — they can find themselves with too little land for the manure they produce.

“Farmers are having to put more and more money into dealing with manure,” said Tim Zauche, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville who is working on the USDA research project.

A dairy farm can spend $200 per cow per year to handle its manure, Zauche said. Those costs include onsite processing and spreading, as well as transportation for offsite disposal.

Environmental activists and regulators are paying increased attention to the contamination of streams and underground water sources from manure runoff. And people who move into what used to be rural areas often complain about manure’s odor.

Under pressure from regulators and the public, more large livestock operations are installing expensive manure treatment systems known as anaerobic digesters.

The digesters use heat to deodorize and sterilize manure, while capturing and using the methane gas it produces to generate electricity. The systems also separate phosphorus-laden liquid fertilizer from semisolid plant residue.

The solids have some known uses, including animal bedding and potting soil, and agricultural scientists would like to find more.

“We really need to think outside the box on what uses for manure are,” said Wendy Powers, a professor of agriculture at Michigan State University.

Scientists at Michigan State in East Lansing and at the USDA’s Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wis., are conducting tests on various types of fiberboard made with the “digester solids.”

As with the wood-based original, the manure-based product is made by combining fibers with a chemical resin, then subjecting the mixture to heat and pressure.

So far, fiberboard made with digester solids seems to match or beat the quality of wood-based products.

“It appears that the fibers interlock with each other better than wood,” said Charles Gould at Michigan State’s College of Ag. and Natural Resources.

Gould and Laurent Matuana, a forestry professor at Michigan State, recently finished a pilot study of manure-based fiberboard, funded by a $5,000 grant from the Michigan Biomass Energy Program.

A draft of the report concluded that fiberboard panels made with processed manure “performed very well in mechanical tests, in many cases meeting or exceeding the standard requirements for particleboard.”

The USDA lab in Wisconsin recently began an 18-month, $30,000 study to test the strength and endurance of the manure-based fiberboard and examine the economic practicality of using digested fiber to make building products.

One good thing about the manure-based fiber is cost, said Zauche. Farmers who currently pay to dispose of manure could soon be selling it.

Whether that’s enough to overcome the public’s squeamishness about using a manure byproduct as a building product remains to be seen, a plywood trade group representative said.