Animal production requires thoughtful use of environmental resources and using whole systems approaches to reduce the environmental impact of animal agriculture.
Department of Animal Science faculty focus their research activities on current and future needs of livestock operators related to environmental sustainability, regulatory compliance, and economic feasibility. These efforts take many forms including developing optimum feeding strategies to help farmers be more economically viable and more sustainable by reducing feed waste; developing mitigation options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture; using experimental efforts, dietary manipulation, and modeling predictions to avoid adding excess nutrients to the land and water; assessing animal waste and manure management systems, operational efficiency of manure equipment, interactions between manure management and utilization and water and air resources; developing programs to assess the positive and negative environmental impacts of shellfish culture on bay environments and efforts to alleviate negative impacts; and developing protocols and varied grazing intensities to enable profitable production with long-term stability of the grazing resource.
Our faculty have the expertise to aid governmental agencies in making sound policy decisions and then offer producers strategies to be compliant.
Associated Programs & Centers
- Animal Nutrition and Environment Modeling Applications Laboratory (ANEMAL)
- Animal Systems Biology
- Mitloehner Lab
- Agricultural Sustainability Institute
- Environmental Physiology in a Changing Climate
- Hess Lab
- Aquaculture - UC Davis Cooperative Extension
- Miller Lab