Joana Brandes-Samak

With a deep-rooted passion for animals, Joana Brandes-Samak has dedicated her career to understand and improve feeding strategies for livestock. She began her academic journey with a Bachelor's degree in Animal Husbandry from VHL Wageningen. After initially working in Marketing and Sales for a few years, she realized her true calling lay in animal nutrition and returned to academia to pursue a Master’s degree in Equine Science at Georg-August University Göttingen. Her master's research focused on the nutritional values of Lucerne(Medicago Sativa) and Sainfoin (Onobrychis Vicifolia) products in equine feed rations, with a focus on prececal digestible protein.

Since 2023, Joana has been working as a doctoral candidate in the division of ruminant nutrition, where her primary research revolves around methane emissions in small ruminants. Her project focuses on measuring and comparing methane emissions from sheep(Ovies Aries) and goats (Capra Hircus) using various methodologies, including the GreenFeed Emission Monitoring System and the Hohenheim Gas Test. The GreenFeed system, in particular, allows for non-invasive monitoring of enteric methane emissions in larger animal groups, providing crucial insights into the influences on emission in real farm settings.

Research Focus:

• Small ruminant nutrition
• Methodologies to measure enteric Methane in ruminants
• Comparison of enteric Methane emission between goats and sheep
• Comparison of enteric Methane emission in different sheep breeds

Publications: