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Nutrient Balance Analysis for Finishing Hog Production: High-Rise Hog vs. Conventional Deep Pit Systems

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Paper number  024145,  2002 ASAE Annual Meeting . (doi: 10.13031/2013.9387) @2002
Authors:   Frederick C. Michel Jr., Huawei Sun, John Pecchia, Harold Keener
Keywords:   High-Rise Hog, ammonia, composting, deep-pit, swine, hog

This report describes the design and objectives of a study to compare the High Rise hog building (HRHB) to conventional deep-pit systems. Manure properties as well as estimated nitrogen, water and dry matter losses for a HRHB, both before and after composting, are compared to published values for a deep-pit finishing system. Results showed that 517 kg/pig (57 kg dry/pig) of manure was produced during a hog grow-finishing cycle of 120 days. From 167 to 171 kg/pig of manure, including added bedding, was removed from the HRHB while 413 kg/pig was estimated to be removed from a deep-pit system. A substantial amount of N was lost (72-75% of the excreted N) during its accumulation while only 17% of the nitrogen from a deep-pit system was reportedly lost. Deep-pit manure has a moisture content of 89% and a nitrogen content of 8%, while the HRHB manure had a near optimal moisture content (62-67% moisture) for composting. Full scale windrow composting of the HRHB manure showed that the cumulative dry matter loss was 37-39% as compared to the excreted manure. Cumulative water and N losses after composting were 90-94% and 81-87% respectively. The amount of manure/bedding remaining after composting was 60-83 kg/pig for the HRHB and 413 kg/pig for the deep-pit system. The HRHB coupled with composting reduced the weight of manure by 84-88% and the volume by 62-63% as compared to the deep-pit system, however, after composting, only 0.59 to 0.88 kg N/pig was left of the 4.6 kg N excreted per pig during finishing. In summary, the HRHB manure management system substantially reduced the moisture content, dry and wet weight of swine manure as compared to literature values for a conventional deep-pit system.

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