By Rob Harris January 3, 2025 — 11.42am , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Listen to this article 4 min London: Meet Hilda, the calf bred to fart and burp less, which could accelerate the dairy industry’s journey to net zero emissions. Born at Crichton Royal Farm, near Dumfries in Scotland, the calf is the first of the UK’s longest-monitored scientific herd conceived using IVF, which researchers said heralded a speedier breeding process to reduce methane emissions. To breed Hilda, scientists took an egg from an immature cow and transferred it to a surrogate animal for birth.Credit: Phil Wilkinson Scientists on the project said using the technique, which involved Hilda’s mother’s eggs being fertilised in a lab, meant the next generation of the herd arrived eight months earlier than was previously possible. With the process to be repeated, scientists at Scotland’s Rural College said it would double the rate of “genetic gain” in the herd, and so speed the process of selecting and breeding more “methane-efficient” animals. Agriculture accounts for about 12 per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, the vast majority of it from livestock methane expelled in belches and flatulence. Methane is produced by microbes in the rumen, the largest part of a cow’s stomach, and they are linked to a cow’s genetics. It is an 84 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and, although it only persists in the atmosphere for 20 years, legally binding deadlines to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 have made it a target for policymakers. Professor Richard Dewhurst, from Scotland’s Rural College, said they could now use IVF with six or eight-month-old animals, reducing the generation interval. […]