Effects of Poultry Species and Housing Types on the Poultry Wastes Physco-Chemical Characteristics

Adequate information on the characteristics of wastes generated from poultry production particularly in the tropical region is lacking. This study investigated and characterized the wastes of different poultry species which included broiler, cockerel and layer with each under battery cage and or deep litter housing systems. As part of waste management study, this work evaluated the physical and chemical characteristics of poultry waste which are needed in the planning and design of components of waste management systems such as handling, transport processing and storage. The results of the tests indicated that wastes collected from battery cage system contain higher values in chemical composition than those from deep litter houses. Physical components of wastes from deep litter are however, higher in values than that of battery cage systems. The broiler wastes recorded the highest values in parameters such as Total solid (14.0mg/l) , Fixed solids (9.1mg/l) and Total dissolved solid (3.9mg/l); for deep litter house; and then dissolved oxygen (2.0mg/l), biochemical oxygen demand (120.7mg/l), chemical oxygen demand (241.3mg/l), Nitrogen (432.3ppm), phosphorus (233.3ppm), potassium (343.3ppm) and Amoniacal Nitrogen (56ppm) , under battery cage system. Layer wastes recorded the highest values for moisture contents (45.3%), volatile solid (9.4%) and pH (8.2) under battery cage system. The results of the analyses of variance (ANOVA) indicate that poultry species and housing systems have high significant effect on all the parameters tested at 1% probability level. Keywords: Poultry waste, characterization, housing types, bird species, physco-chemical properties