CARBON HOOFPRINT ISSUE 30.qxd:Jerkins feature.qxd
21/5/10
15:01
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BUSINESS
Global warming and carbon emissions are affecting results on the track as well as profitability, and there are numerous ways in which racing stables can reduce their carbon hoofprint. By Tamara Farrant
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RAINERS are judged by their horses’ performance on the track, so training regimes, feeding, facilities, and management are all honed to give every animal its best chance of success. While the sciences of physiology, nutrition, and psychology are already wellestablished, the organic chemistry involved in the carbon cycle could provide an edge in performance, profitability, and appeal to owners. Global warming has a direct influence on any trainer’s key criteria: winning. Carbon dioxide levels are nearly double what they were 200 years ago. Over that same time period oxygen levels have more than halved. Because oxygen levels in the bloodstream reflect the atmospheric levels, the oxygen in the blood of horses has also effectively halved. To make the problem worse for a racehorse, as lactic acid builds up during exercise it becomes harder for working muscles to use the depleted oxygen and muscles become tired. A meaningful target to give horses an edge is to have the carbon dioxide in their blood reduced to a minimum level. This can be done by reducing the carbon dioxide entering the bloodstream from the gut during the digestion process. To achieve this, Dr Keith Foster, an innovator in the field of natural animal care, started looking at charcoal, which wild horses are observed eating. “Rather than address acid in the hind gut,
Active charcoal under an electron microscope
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which is for probiotics and other feed additives, I wanted to see if we could take acid and other nasties out before it got there”, he said. Charcoal has a history of over 4,000 years of use as an antidote to poison and as a digestive aid. Dr Foster has developed a processing technique that activates the charcoal sufficiently so that it will remove carbon dioxide, acid, and toxins from food in the gut, but not so active that it starts to remove beneficial nutrients. With carbon dioxide removed, the oxygen has greater opportunity to cross into the bloodstream. The higher level of oxygen in the blood, as all trainers and athletes will know, improves performance, healing, and stamina. Understanding the science of carbon dioxide could also help reduce bills. The average European is responsible for ten tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year. Carbon dioxide is the main emission from burning fuel, which is where most advice on reducing emissions is focused. For horse businesses, however, there are two other essential areas of gas emissions: management of manure and care of pasture. Importantly, manure produces far worse greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. Even worse is nitrous oxide, which is 310 times worse than carbon dioxide. These numbers are the carbon equivalent of a gas, which gives us a true measure of the output of activity for the different kinds of greenhouse gases we produce. Canadian researcher Gurpreet Singh compared emissions from two 50 tonne piles of dung – one which he mixed and kept well aerated, and the other untouched. The static pile generated 233kg of equivalent carbon dioxide emissions per tonne, while the turned pile emitted a mere 92kg of equivalent carbon dioxide. This is a massive difference and must encourage anyone not regularly sending their manure away for composting to look again at what they can do. If you want a DIY approach use the fork or bucket on a tractor to turn it every three or four weeks. Alternatively it can be aerated by forcing a crow bar into the heap to create air channels. If it is not raining regularly it may need to be watered to keep it moist. If the composting is not progressing as
quickly as hoped, a sprinkling of lime creates a better environment for the microbes to multiply. Putting a cover over the manure or throwing in a few shovelfuls of dirt to provide soil microbes are other ways of improving the end result. If conditions are good you should get useable compost with one turning over six to eight weeks. A significant portion of carbon in organic material is likely to be returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, but composting is seen as positive because the alternatives are worse. Fossil fuels are not used to transport the manure off site. If compostable materials are left to rot or go to landfill they will produce methane – which is a far worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Alternatively, composting without air can be commercially harnessed. In these