Quality of chicken litter and the alternative of acidification as treatment

Abstract

A common practice in poultry farming in many countries, including Brazil is the reuse of the chicken litter by various lots, represents a way to reduce costs by acquiring a new chicken litter, increasing the amount of nutrients in the chicken litter to be used as a biofertilizer in agriculture and stabilizing or reducing the environmental impact with the production of bedding per chicken produced. With this, some alternatives can be studied for the treatment of reused poultry litter, in order to reduce the impacts caused by chicken, environment and humans. Therefore, the chemical treatment have been used as a method of treatment of the chicken litter, because when applied on the same act reducing the pH and consequently producing an unfavorable environment for the microorganisms producing ammonia. Therefore, it was aimed to present an approach of the main factors that affect the quality of the poultry litter, as well as the alternatives for treatment with emphasis on the use of acidifying agents applied directly to the poultry litter .The method of acidification of the bed has been shown to be effective in reducing pH and consequently reducing the volatilization of ammonia, thus triggering other qualitative factors such as the reduction of the microbiological load, since these are directly linked to the pH of the chicken litter.