Composting of dead poultry

From 3 to 10% of the poultry in the process of growing and keeping dies from one reason or another (illness, cannibalism in the herd, etc.), and the disposal of such a bird is now a big problem for many poultry farms. Current practice involves its burial in the so-called “Czech pits”, burning or processing in autoclaves, which requires significant costs and can lead to environmental pollution. Composting such a bird is much cheaper, but it also raises the concerns of some specialists regarding the possible negative impact on the environment. The purpose of these studies was to study the kinetic laws of the composting process of dead birds, its impact on the environment, the quality and safety of the compost obtained. An experiment was conducted in which the corpses of birds were composted together with litter droppings in a ratio of 1: 6 in two versions: without treatment with a microbiological preparation (D1) and a treated microbiological preparation (D2). Option (K) was used as a control, in which the litter was composted without the addition of poultry corpses and treatment with a microbiological preparation. It was found that in the process of composting, the temperature of the raw material reached 64-66 °C, the duration of the period with temperatures of more than 60 °C was 5-9 days, which according to previous studies is enough to neutralize most types of pathogenic microorganisms. Processing the raw material with a microbiological preparation contributed to an increase in the temperature of the substrate in individual periods of the active composting phase by 1-5 °C and a decrease in ammonia emission by 1.1-1.2 times. In both cases (D1 and D2), almost complete decomposition of the corpses of birds was ensured for 45 days. Composting the litter together with the dead bird allowed to increase the nitrogen content in the finished compost. In all cases, bacteria of the genus E. coli and Salmonella were not found in the finished compost.