Bovotica raises $3.4m to stop cow burps from killing the climate

A Queensland University of Technology (QUT) spinout is celebrating its $3.4 million seed round to help commercialise a novel way to limit the amount of methane cattle emit.

Bovotica was founded by CEO Dr Andrew Leech and Professors Gene Tyson and Phil Pope from QUT’s Centre for Microbiome Research. The company’s built around a means of reducing cows’ methane reduction while simultaneously improving their metabolic efficiency.

“It has been previously estimated that up to 12 per cent of feed intake is lost to methane production,” Professor Pope said.

“Our technology looks to direct the metabolic flux away from methane production and into the production of short chain fatty acids, which serve as a more efficient energy source for cattle, leading to improved production of meat and milk.”

So far, Bovotica is working toward two products to help improve Australia’s cattle industry. One is a feed supplement, the other is an oral drench which gets injected directly into a cow’s mouth.

Both products aim to use a specific, proprietary blend of pre- and probiotics to regulate the microbiome in the cow’s rumen – the largest distinct compartment of a cow’s complex stomach which acts as a kind of fermentation chamber for digestive microorganisms.

“By transitioning the rumen from an inefficient, high-methane state to a more optimised, low-methane state, we are initially aiming to reduce methane emissions by up to 50 per cent,” Professor Tyson said.

“The probiotics are mainly hydrogen-metabolising bacteria that naturally occur in the rumen. By increasing their number, we can create rumen conditions where less hydrogen is available for methanogens, which in turn will reduce methane emissions.”

The Australian cattle industry, is estimated to be worth some $16 billion in 2024-25 with Aussie beef exports reaching a record 127,000 tonnes in April this year.

But this high value export – a cornerstone of Australia’s agricultural expertise – is a massive emitter. Methane which is is among the worst greenhouse gases locking in around 80 times more heat than an equivalent tonne of CO₂. The total amount of methane produced by Australian livestock is estimated to account for around 70% of the agriculture sector’s emissions and 13% of Australia’s overall.

Bovotica was picked as one of SparkLabs Cultiv8’s 2024 accelerator cohort. It won’t be the last we see from a methane-eradicating local startup as the government funded $9 million worth of research trials to tackle this problem in August last year.