Improving Poultry Litter Management
An AAES study under way in Alabama’s poultry-heavy Sand Mountain region ultimately will help poultry producers improve their management of land application of broiler litter to pastures so as to better protect water quality in nearby streams and lakes.
Alabama’s poultry industry produces 2 million tons of chicken litter annually. Growers spread most of it over pastures because it is a valuable organic fertilizer and soil conditioner. Overapplication, however, leads to a soil buildup of phosphorous, which subsequently finds its way to bordering waters. Excess phosphorous in water can cause depleted oxygen levels, thus affecting aquatic organisms.
In this study at the AAES’s Sand Mountain Research and Extension Center, AU biosystems engineer Puneet Srivastava and collaborators are investigating the mechanisms behind how phosphorus accumulates in soils and how it moves— through surface runoff or groundwater?— to adjacent water bodies.
Once those processes are better understood, the currently used litter management tool known as a phosphorus index can be improved and producers will be able to better plan how and where to apply litter.
Also in the project, to help deter overapplication of litter, the researchers are creating a geographic information system–based poultry litter transportation analysis system that will link producers who have excess litter to farmers who need it.
From Impact, June 2007