November 21, 2006

US researchers injecting poultry litter into soil to prevent runoff 

One of the problems posed by poultry litter is that simply spreading it over the soil exposes chemicals like phosphorus to runoff which can drain into waters and cause pollution.

Disposing of poultry litter has long been an expensive problem for the thousands of poultry farms in the Delmarva Peninsula in the north-eastern part of the US, which produces 511 million chickens annually and 600,000 tonnes of poultry litter.

In an effort to prevent runoff, Peter Kleinman a soil scientist with the Agricultural Research service, is investigating a method of injecting chicken litter into the soil.

Kleinman has been researching fertilizer-application equipment called injectors, which squirt liquefied manure below the soil surface.

Kleinman's research is supported by the University of New Hampshire's Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The team is using a combination of rainfall simulators, runoff monitoring technology and other equipment to examine how well four types of cow-manure injectors curbed runoff and odours.