Emission of nitrogen in the form of ammonia from poultry rearing facilities has been an important topic for the poultry industry because of concerns regarding the effects of ammonia on the environment. Sound scientific data is needed to accurately estimate air emissions from poultry operations. Many factors, such as season of the year, ambient temperature and humidity, bird health, and manageme...

Land disposal of poultry litter is an environmental concern often associated to excess phosphorus (P) in soils and potential water pollution in regions with intense poultry production. Although poultry litter can be moved off the farm and traded as fertilizer, its transportation becomes less economical with increasing distances from the farm. Thus, new litter management alternatives are needed ...

INTRODUCTION Campylobacter jejuni is the leading bacterial food-borne pathogen within the European Union, and poultry meat is an important vehicle for its transmission to humans. However, there is limited knowledge about how this organism persists in broiler litter and faeces. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a number of environmental parameters, such as temperature, humidity, ...

Poultry rearing in the United States is approximately a thirty million dollar per year industry. To produce this large number of product, a by-product such as poultry litter is inevitable. The land application of poultry litter as an organic fertilizer is an ideal choice for the disposal of this high nitrogen, high organic waste. However, some precautions must be observed, particularly with reg...

Environmental impacts of composting poultry litter with chemical amendments at the field scale have not been well quantified. The objectives of this study were to measure (i) P runoff and (ii) forage yield and N uptake from small plots fertilized with composted and fresh poultry litter. Two composting studies, aerated using mechanical turning, were conducted in consecutive years. Composted litt...

A common practice in the commercial broiler industry is to reuse litter over multiple broiler flocks. Over time the bacterial populations in the reused litter increases but how those organisms are spatially distributed throughout the litter bed is unclear. Therefore, the goal of this project was to investigate the distribution of bacteria at three different depths of litter. Litter samples were...

Poultry litter application to fields that will be cropped to legumes is desirable because legumes biologically fix N2 gas from the atmosphere, allowing manures to be applied at rates needed only to satisfy crop P and/or K requirements. The need to export the nutrients in poultry litter from western Arkansas to areas of intensive cropping and fertilizer use plus recent increases in commercial fe...

Maize (Zea mays L.) is an important crop among Brazilian smallholder farmers,who are also responsible for 40% of the poultry and egg production in the country.Although poultry litter is considered a potential pollutant, if properly stabilized anddistributed in the field it can be used as a source of nitrogen for maize production.In this study, the response of maize to mineral fertilizer and pou...

An alternative broiler litter to pine shavings may be switchgrass, a high yielding forage crop (8-12 tons per acre) that can grow across the Southeastern U.S. A study was conducted to determine the efficacy of chopped switchgrass as a litter material for broiler chickens. Pine Shavings (PS) and Switchgrass (SG) were used as litter treatments with 10 replications each. Body weight, body weight g...