Fermenting Livestock Manure: Turning a Storage Problem into a Product
How a manure fermentation agent affects a store or heap: the fermentation process, what it does for odour and stability, how to apply it, and where the limits are.
Two different problems sit under this heading, and they are often confused. The first is the environment inside the house: ammonia from decomposing litter and slurry affects animal health and feed conversion before it becomes a nuisance to anyone outside. The second is what happens to the manure afterwards — storage, stabilisation, composting and land application, where odour and nitrogen loss are the practical concerns.
Both are addressed biologically, but the interventions differ. Ventilation and stocking density set the baseline inside the house; bedding fermentation changes how the floor is managed entirely; and stabilising manure before it is stored or spread reduces both the odour load and the nitrogen lost to atmosphere.
These notes are written for farm operators and for the integrators and contractors who specify for them. As elsewhere on this site, no dosage figure is published that has not been confirmed for the specific house, bedding material and stocking density involved.
2 articles in this topic
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Fermentation Bedding Bacteria on Livestock Farms: How Bedding Culture Works in a Barn
How bedding cultures work in a livestock barn: the fermentation process in the bedding, what it does for odour and ammonia, how to establish it, and where it does not help.
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