Determination of global warming potential of dairy cattle farms

Dairy cattle's breeding is carried out intensively in the Eastern Anatolia Region (Turkey) and is a source of methane emissions. This study calculated global warming potentials arising from enteric fermentation and manure management of existing dairy cattle farms in this region between 2016 and 2020 using the tier-1 method defined by the IPCC. As a result, it has been found that the global warming potential of this region is 20,287.68 × 103 tons of CO2 in total. The total CH4 value in the research area was 966.08 × 103 tons. Furthermore, it has been determined that 98.02% of these emissions are enteric CH4, and 1.98% is CH4 originating from fertiliser management. Therefore, it is seen that enteric CH4 constitutes a large part of the total CH4 emissions. For this reason, CH4 emissions can be controlled by choosing silage feeds in feed selection and adding minerals and vitamins to silage feeds.