Sisters celebrate graduation success

She may be taking time out to graduate with a Massey University PhD today, but Dr Kirsty Hammond’s research into reducing methane emissions from livestock is continuing overseas.

She is one of 36 doctoral graduates from the College of Sciences being honoured at today’s two graduation ceremonies. Dr Hammond was joined at the ceremony by her sister Nicole, who was awarded a Bachelor of Agriscience.

Dr Hammond’s research, carried out in partnership with AgResearch, focused on a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand – methane from pasture digestion by sheep and cattle.

Dr Hammond (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) undertook trials where sheep were put into specialised chambers to measure the gas they emit. Her goal was to find whether changing an animal’s diet could affect the amount of methane emitted.

The research showed the energy loss to methane decreased as feed intakes increased.

“This provides an additional incentive for feeding well to achieve high productivity and lower quantities of methane per product,” she says.

This is a win-win situation for farmers as well as the environment. “It’s all about energy in the end,” she says. “Methane is a waste of energy for that animal, so trying to harness that and turn it into something more productive is the goal. Of course, climate change also makes it harder to farm due to the changing conditions, so there’s incentive there too.”

Dr Hammond, from Whakatane, is now taking this new knowledge to the world, with a post-doctoral position at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

“I’m now focusing on their farming system, which is different from New Zealand’s,” she says. “Cows there are only out on pasture about six months a year, the rest of the time they are sheltered and fed conserved feeds.”

Dr Hammond is replicating the methane inventory she worked on in New Zealand in the United Kingdom. “New Zealand is ahead of the game there, we’ve got a well-established methane inventory that can be referred to, and current research objectives overseas are to achieve something similar.”

She is in constant contact with colleagues in New Zealand and has found being based in Europe has opened new doors. “Everything is so close here so it’s easy to travel to new places, meet scientists with similar goals and share that knowledge.”

Dr Hammond says she initially wanted to be a vet when she began at Massey, but wasn’t selected after her first year, so followed her farming roots into a Bachelor of Animal Science. “My family farms in Whakatane, so I’ve always been interested in animals.”

Solving the methane issue is one of the agriculture industry’s biggest challenges. “There’s no silver bullet, but everyone is working towards a solution,” she says. “The key is collaboration.”