Vytelle has announced the commercial release of Vytelle Sense Methane, a methane phenotyping system which costs a fraction of available systems and enables concurrent measurement of intake and sustainability.
The technology was featured at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association CattleCon in Nashville, US, early last month when producers saw live demonstrations.
The system addresses a critical gap in livestock sustainability: how to economically identify cattle which convert feed into profitable outputs rather than wasted energy.
By integrating methane sensors developed in partnership with Integrity Communications Solutions, Inc. and existing Vytelle Sense feed intake nodes, producers can now measure individual animal emissions alongside feed efficiency data without requiring additional labour or voluntary animal participation.
“Cattle producers need cost-effective, scalable tools backed by robust data to navigate the sustainability landscape with confidence,” Vytelle's chief science officer Dr Jason Osterstock.
Field trials of Vytelle Sense Methane Powered by Integrity have delivered strong results, and the company is rapidly expanding the Vytelle methane database to provide producers the information they need to make profitable decisions.
It’s not just about sustainability of the beef and dairy industries, it's also about profitability for producers, according to the company’s vice-president of global sales Lisa Rumfield.
“Vytelle measures methane emissions in the context of efficiency, which is where profitability starts,” Lisa said.
“These are economically important traits for the world’s beef and dairy producers,” she said.
“Without profitability, industry can’t be sustainable.”
This technology retrofits into existing infrastructure at 10 per cent of the cost of existing tools, allowing producers to capture methane at scale whether they’re meeting supply chain sustainability requirements or regulatory reporting obligations.
“Vytelle already curates the world’s largest efficiency database, and we’ll rapidly build the world’s largest methane database across more than 30 breeds,” Lisa said.
Field trials in North America throughout 2025 demonstrates the system can yield accurate phenotypes in 30 days, with animals measured multiple times daily as they consume feed in bunks.
The correlation between methane emission concentration and measured feed intake was 0.47, providing the complete biological picture needed to interpret sustainability metrics.
Vytelle Sense strategic account manager Austin Hoff said methane emitted was energy lost in a cycle cattlemen don’t get paid for.
“We need to economically identify cattle which spend their calories on performance and reproduction because those are the areas where we can be profitable,” he said.
A standard eight-node Vytelle Sense system can phenotype 384 animals annually at a fraction of the cost of respiration chambers or competing technologies.
Unlike systems requiring voluntary animal participation aided by attractants, every animal in a Vytelle Sense system receives multiple measurements daily through integrated feed bunk monitoring.
International rollout begins in June, with units available for purchase to existing Vytelle Sense system owners and new customer availability to follow.