Biome HooofPrint enhances cow’s nutrition while lowering methane

Sometimes, the answer to a long -term problem is the issue of finding a new perspective.

Take methane from cows: For years, people were Try to eliminate gas It is a cow wounds in an attempt to reduce the effect of cattle on the climate. But they did not make a drain. This is partly because they were looking at the issue from the climate world perspective, not a farmer.

Catherine Bolkov, co -founder and executive director of HoFPRINT BIOMEHe was thinking of the problem like farms, though.

“The first time I heard about this methane problem is animal science 101,” Bolkov, who has a doctorate in animal science. It was not in the context of climate change, but animal health and productivity.

Polkov and its co -founder Scott Collins stumbled on a new way to modify a cow microbium using enzymes, lower methane while strengthening the nutrients available to the cow.

This discovery settled a 15 million dollar chain tour led by SOSV, and Startup exclusively told Techcrunch. Among the other participating investors are Agizeronz, Alexandria Venture Investments, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Breakthrough Energy Fellows, Good Grow Capital, Ponderosa Ventures and Twynam. The new tour will help the company experience its enzymes on farms.

She said: “We have spent thousands of years raising animals to make them as effective as possible and increase the return, but there were not many attempts to change the microbium.” “This would be as if you were a car engineering but you never changed the engine – this is where all the energy comes.”

Hoofprint feed adjusts the microbium in the rumen cow and stops the growth of methane, a strong greenhouse gas that warms up 84 times more than the same amount of carbon dioxide.

“RUMEN is” HodgePodge “. Cows cows tend to be very difficult to digest and extract nutrients from them. For thousands of years, cows have evolved alongside a complex microbium in the rumen that helps break the feed, and release nutrients in this process.

Cow absorbs some of these nutrients, but not everything. Another group of microbes steals some of these nutrients to push their growth at the expense of the cow, generating methane as a secondary product. “It is a very specific sub -group of microbes that make methane,” said Bolkov.

Hoofprint enzyme suppresses these microbes. You will use the yeast starting to make enzymes, similar to how to make other industrial enzymes, including those used in cheese, detergents and other products.

For Bronson in SOSV, the fact that HoofPrint enzymes were derived from the rumen itself. He faced one of the previous products that reduce methane, Boufire, a A wave of misleading When a large food company announced trials in the United Kingdom in December.

He does not think Hoofprint will face the same reaction. “The main concept is that their product is a natural protein. It is exactly like any other protein that an animal eats. It is natural for chrome.”

Polkov said Hoofprint is an improvement of 5 % in “feeding efficiency”, or the number of pounds that a cow can put in a certain amount of nutrition.

By improving rumen efficiency cow, Bronson is confident that Hoofprint will be able to succeed with farmers as other startups failed. He said: “Methan knocks is the table shares.” “To make it more productive is what they will pay for.”