Composting unamended chicken manure

Normally, manures are composted with amendments. However, a large commercial egg producer in Ohio is composting unamended chicken manure. Studies were done to characterize this composting, both in situ and in pilot-scale vessels. While overly wet material can hamper initial operation, the general progression dries the material and produces a granular output that is below 20 percent (wet basis) moisture and can be bagged and/or sold commercially. A rewetting study on the present output material indicated it is incompletely composted. Further studies of initial and partially composted materials characterized heating, reaction rates, oxygen demand and ammonia output during composting. Very high ammonia production relative to more conventional manure composting operations is the most important result from this work. Retention and recapture of ammonia is the focus of research to be reported elsewhere.