chicken litter

[TexasBred]

I know that you know you feeds TB but I find it hard to believe there are any seeds of any kind in the feed aside from corn. These companies would not waste money putting anything in the feed that will not put weight on the birds.

Craig I know too it's hard to believe but you'd be amazed at the kinds of seeds that show up in finished feeds. These companies have no choice. The seeds are in the ingredients they purchase. I've had many samples pulled and analyzed and they are there along with a lot of other things nobody ever checks unless they do a microscopic analysis.

So you're saying they are not actually putting it in there but it's there already from the ingredients they purchase from their suppliers. I can understand that. So now I say it comes from both the litter and the seed already there

Yessir, absolutely. Many seeds are almost microscopic themselves. And it probably does come from the litter and seed that are already present.

 

[TexasBred]

Maybe in ga you can get composted litter but around here they haul it off to someone's field as soon as the house is cleaned out. It may sit in that pile for awhile till its spread but it's not being turned and having carbon added to it and the temp monitored. It's not being managed to kill weed seed that is 100% in the litter.

tdc we have mostly turkey houses out this way but it's done both ways. There is a company East of me that has wind rows of composting turkey litter a quarter mile long and 15 foot tall......then others simply remove it from the houses and put it directly on the fields.....stinks to high heaven for a while too.

 

[dun]

Bet what you would like. I had to send some of the plants off to the state agronomist to get them IDed. If they were common in this area you would think that someone would have seen them before.

 

[City Guy]

What is alum and why would it be added to the litter?

 

[Margonme]

What is alum and why would it be added to the litter?

Alum:
Alum is both a specific chemical compound and a class of chemical compounds. The specific compound is the hydrated potassium aluminium sulfate (potassium alum) with the formula KAl(SO4)2·12H2O. More widely, alums are double sulfate salts, with the general formula AM(SO4)2·12H 2O, where A is a monovalent cation such as potassium or ammonium and M is a trivalent metal ion such as aluminum or chromium(III). When the trivalent ion is aluminium, the alum is named after the monovalent ion.

That is probably more than you wanted to know. It is widely used as a pretreatment in municipal water treatment plants. The chemical properties makes it a flocculent. It dissolves easily in water and binds the particulates. Thus settling the total suspended particulates.

I worked at the Hazard Municipal Water Treatment Plant in 1974. The water pumped out of the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River there was very cloudy from erosion from the extensively strip mined watershed. The alum settled the suspended particulates in our clarifier basin before the water was treated with chlorine.

What Ebenezer is correctly saying is that alum is hydrophilic, meaning it "loves water". Taking what Ebenezer is saying, it will grab water molecules thus lowering humidity. Thereby reducing scalding and blindness by lowering humidity.

 

[TexasBred]

Actually it controls down ammonia concentrations and binds phosphorus. Hard to hold down humidity with 20k birds in a house and 70% humidity outside the house.

 

[Margonme]

Actually it controls down ammonia concentrations and binds phosphorus. Hard to hold down humidity with 20k birds in a house and 70% humidity outside the house.

I don't disagree with that. Alum is hydrophilic. So it will hold some of the water by a weak ionic bond. Alum is an interesting compound. It will bind most anything with a weak charge. That is why it is such an effective flocculent.