A Novel Way to Handle Chicken Waste

Finding an economical and environmentally friendly way to handle
the vast volume of chicken manure from Georgia’s poultry industry
has been a concern for years. Now a University of Georgia
researcher has a novel way to handle the mess and make money,
too.



Craig Sheppard, an entomologist with the UGA College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, says a certain
not-so-picky maggot would be more than happy to help clean up
Georgia chicken houses.



Sheppard has developed a system using the black soldier fly. The
system could reduce the bulk of the manure by half and supply
added income by selling the maggots as feed for animals.



“We can get rid of the manure and in the process help the farmer
make more money,” Sheppard said. “It will also help the farmers
with their nutrient management problems.”

Better Management



As Georgia’s poultry industry continues to grow, management
practices will have to be developed to handle the manure, said
Glen Harris, a UGA Extension Service scientist.



“Anybody that produces animal waste is going to have to have some
sort of manure management plan that uses the manure in an
environmentally friendly fashion,” Harris said.



A practice gaining in popularity uses chicken manure to fertilize
crops. Experts recommend 2 tons of manure per acre.
Theoretically, Georgia has enough cropland to use up the chicken
manure produced each year. But Harris said hauling it to distant
fields costs too much.



New environmental regulations could also cut back the amount of
manure farmers are allowed to spread in fields, he said.



“The biggest problem is the excess nutrients in manure,” he said.
“We can’t distribute it all. There is only so much cropland and
safe places to distribute the waste close to the layer
houses.”



“We will eventually get to where there won’t be a single way to
handle the manure,” Harris said. “But we will develop a number of
different ways to get the manure distributed.”



Money Maggot



Sheppard’s system works in chicken houses with egg-laying hens.
Georgia hens produce more than 240,000 tons of chicken manure a
year.



The manure is allowed to fall to the maggots under the floor of
the chicken house. By itself, a maggot is only about an inch long
and one-fourth inch in diameter, Sheppard said. But if you get
enough of them, they can eat tons of animal waste.



Insects go through three major stages: larvae, pupae and adult.
As the black soldier fly transforms from a larva to a pupa (the
prepupa stage) it crawls out of the manure and sheds its skin and
the lining of its gut. It then buries itself, he said, and gets
ready to become a fly.



With Sheppard’s system, the prepupa uses a ramp to crawl out of
the manure. At the end of the ramp, it falls into a holding pit.
The collected prepupae can be fed straight to animals or milled
into other feed sources.



“I’m working on a system that can produce the larvae year-round,”
he said.



A full maggot is 42 percent protein and 35 percent fat. A large
collection system can yield 58 tons of prepupae in five months,
he said.



“We want to help the farmer make more money,” he said. “We can
turn the manure into $500 per ton feedstuff. That could mean as
much as $30,000 a year.”



The maggots could also help manage swine waste and possibly human
waste, he said.



Many types of maggots like to feed on animal waste. But Sheppard
prefers the black soldier fly because it’s harmless to humans. It
also, through competition, reduces housefly populations.



“When the soldier fly matures, it usually goes to the woods,”
Sheppard said. “So, it’s not a pest to humans.”