Full Length Research Paper

Poultry faeces management with a simple low cost plastic digester

K. A. Yongabi¹, P. L. Harris² and D. M. Lewis³

¹Phytobiotechnology Research Foundation, P.O Box 921, Bamenda, Cameroon.

²School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia.

³School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: yongabika@yahoo.com

Accepted 13 February, 2009

Poultry faeces collected from the research farm of the school of Agriculture, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria, was anaerobically digested for five weeks retention time using a plastic type digester constructed at the FMEnv/ZERI Research Centre and a follow up system set up in Cameroon at the compound of the National Polytechnic Bambui, Bamenda in the North West part of the country with 200 L poultry faeces collected from a private farmer in Bambui village who reported that composted poultry faeces used to fertilized his plantain field generated stem and root rot disease. Following anaerobic digestion of poultry faeces for 37 days in Nigeria, the raw slurries with a very high mean bacterial counts too numerous to count (estimated as above 10,000 cfu per ml) reduced drastically to only 180 cful ml while mean coliform and Escherichia coli counts too numerous to count reduced drastically to 130 and 87 cful ml, respectively. The difference in mean microbial counts from the raw to treated slurries was far more significant than the raw slurry kept on bench and analysed at the end of five weeks as control. Cyst of Eimeria spp and ova of Ascaridia detected in the raw slurries were absent in the anaerobically digested slurry. Seven species of soil pathogenic nematodes detected in a compost pit and from stem and root rot of plantain trees fertilized with the manure at a local farm in Cameroon were not detected after the poultry faeces was anaerobically digested in a pilot plastic digester in a five week retention time. Biogas produced at the end of the process was used as cooking fuel and burnt for 3 h daily for 5 days. The findings showed that the plastic type digester was efficient in disinfecting contaminated poultry faeces while providing biogas and sterile mineralized fertilizer.

Key words: Plastic, anaerobic, digester, simple, cheap, poultry, faeces.