Anaerobic digestion of animal manure in biogas digesters has shown promise as a technology in reducing the microbial load to safe and recommended levels. We sought to treat dairy manure obtained from the Fort Hare Dairy Farm by investigating the survival rates of bacterial pathogens, through a total viable plate count method, before, during and after mesophilic anaerobic digestion. Different mi...

An alternative to land spreading of manure is to grow crops of algae on the N and P present in the manure and convert manure N and P into algal biomass. The objective of this study was to evaluate the fertilizer value of dried algal biomass that had been grown using anaerobically digested dairy manure. Results from a flask study using two soils amended with algal biomass showed that 3% of total...

Composting manure, if done properly, should kill pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella and Escherichia coli O157:H7, providing for an environmentally safe product. Over a 3-year period, samples of composted dairy manure, representing 11 composting operations (two to six samples per producer; 100 total samples), were screened for Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 and were all culture negative. Non...

Sunny Day Farm was the home of the highest producing registered Jersey herd in the world at the time this study was conducted. The cows are housed in a freestall barn and manure is removed from the barn using a flush system. The manure treatment system on this farm includes the following components in series: an inclined stationary screen separator, a two–chambered settling basin, and a lagoon....

Dairy manure increases the yields of dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) from eroded, furrow-irrigated soils and may increase corn (Zea mays L.) silage yield from steeper eroded areas under sprinkler irrigation. In a 2-year field study in southern Idaho on Portneuf silt loam (coarse silty, mixed, superactive, mesic Durinodic Xeric Haplocalcid), the effects o...

Methane emission f rom l ivestock and agricultural wastes contribute globally more than 3 0 % to the anthropogenic atmospheric methane source. Estimates of this number have been derived f rom respiration chamber experiments. W e determined methane emission rates f rom a tracer experiment in a modern cow shed hosting 43 dairy cows in their accustomed environment. During a 24-hour period the conc...

Animal manures are a valuable resource, providing readily available plant nutrients ; however, runoff from lands receiving animal manure has been shown to contribute to water pollution. Understanding the loss of nutrients from slow release fertilizers, such as animal manure, after application is critical in determining and designing practices to reduce and/or control the temporal availability a...

Characterizing labile P forms in animal manure is a challenge due to their susceptibility to hydrolysis. In this study, we enzymatically characterized P forms in dairy manure (no bedding), collected from a representative dairy farm in New York, by separating into soluble and residual components under mild assay conditions using water and sodium acetate buffer (pH 5.0). About 75% of total manure...

The bacterial quality of surface waters determines their acceptability for both drinking and recreational uses. Since livestock activities have been implicated as sources of fecal contamination, information on the bacterial quality of runoff from manured cropland is required. Bacteriological parameters (total coliform [TC], fecal coliform (FC], and fecal streptococcus [FS]) were monitored in sp...

A field-scale plot study was conducted at Virginia Tech’s Prices Fork Research Farm, to evaluate the transport of nutrients in runoff from manure and fertilizer applied at P-based agronomic rates to cropland planted to corn. Simulated rainfall events representing 2to 10-year storms in southwest Virginia, occurring 1 and 2 days following manure and fertilizer application were used to generate ru...