An Assessment of Some Public Health Problems Resulting from Feeding Poultry Litter to Animals.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION THE rapid development of large-scale broiler and egg production farms in recent years has made the disposal of poultry litter a major problem for producers. Studies by Belasco (1954) and Jurtshuk et al. (1955) showed that rumen microorganisms can utilize the uric acid of poultry litter as a nitrogen source. Feeding studies on the utilization of poultry litter as a feed additive for ruminants demonstrated satisfactory animal nutrition when litter was fed as 20–30% of the ration of growing cattle (Southwell et al., 1958), 10–15% of the ration for lactating ewes (Noland et al., 1955), and 15–25% of the ration of breeder swine (Camp, 1959). Thus, poultry and shell egg producers were provided with a profitable means of litter disposal, and livestock producers were afforded an attractive source of cheap feed with a value on an equivalent basis with grain of fifteen dollars a ton. As…