Ozone for the Purification of Poultry Drinking Water
Report 1009527
Date Published Apr 2004
Details: 1009527 Final Report - Available On-line
Abstract
As in any livestock industry, chickens require a clean and uncontaminated source of drinking water to make maximum daily gains and maintain flock health. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using ozone and filtration to treat well water for a typical broiler unit in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
Background
Broiler production in Mississippi began in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Today Mississippi is the fourth largest broiler producing state in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture - National Agricultural Statistics Service, Mississippi production in 2002 was 769,500,000 birds producing over four billion pounds of products valued at slightly over 1.2 billion dollars. Poultry is the largest agricultural commodity in the state. Once a farmer contracts with a processor and builds his buildings, he can expect to be paid 18-24 cents for each bird that is accepted and processed. From this payment the farmer must pay all fixed and variable production costs while the broilers are on his farm. All of the farmer's costs should be minimized while a high quality product is produced. Minimizing water costs is one mechanism that can save a considerable dollar amount per year without impacting product quality. The amount of water utilized by a flock of broilers is dependent on bird size and the evaporative cooling needs to keep the house at a temperature for optimum growth and production. Most poultry integrators require a dependable and clean water supply that provides at least 15 gallons of water per minute for a 25,000-bird broiler house. Many growers have six broiler houses on their farm. The needed water for a six-house production unit is a minimum of 130,000 gallons per day. Utilizing municipal water supplies to satisfy these water needs costs approximately $1,800/month. Drilling and maintaining a 90-gallon per minute well and providing water treatment is much less
expensive.
Objective
To demonstrate the feasibility of using ozone and filtration to treat well water for a six-house broiler unit in Neshoba County, Mississippi; to determine the feasibility of installing additional wells and water treatment for broiler production.
Approach
Steve Cumberland operates six broiler houses at his farm in Neshoba County, Mississippi, using water from a well outfitted with a two-horsepower pump capable of providing 30 gallons of water per minute. Before this study, the well water contained iron, manganese, and sulfides at levels higher than those recommended for safe drinking water. The research team installed a 32-gram per hour ozone generator with three filtration tanks at the farm with filtration tanks timed to expel precipated iron, manganese, and sulfate compounds at night. The team compared the performance of the Cumberland system before and after ozonation, including data on mortality percentages, average weight of finished broilers, pounds of feed per pound of gain, average daily gain, and total condemned birds at processing. Results were also compared with average data from other local farms working with the same integrator, Peco Farms, LLC.
Results
Key results of this study include the following: • The ozonation of the well water did not greatly change the production data for the Cumberland Farms operation. • Feed conversion was constant over the study and consistent with the feed conversion for all farmers producing for Peco Farms, LLC. • Total condemned birds dropped slightly. • Emitter fouling due to precipitants decreased. • Variable costs for water decreased by nearly $20,000 for the six houses. Based on this study, Steve Cumberland indicated he would drill an additional well or wells and use ozonation to treat the water for the poultry houses.
EPRI Perspective
EPRI Global is a leader in the application of ozone in agriculture and food processing. The treatment of well water for use as drinking water for livestock and poultry is one of many ozone demonstration programs conducted by the EPRI Global Team in conjunction with their utility partners. Other demonstrations include using ozone in flour milling, ozone treatments in aquaculture tanks, ozone treatment of poultry chiller water, ozone in drip irrigation systems, and ozone applications in catfish processing.
Program
2004 Program 014.0 Municipal Water and Industrial Wastewater
Keywords
Ozone Wells Livestock Water Treatment Agriculture Filtration
Other KeyWords
Broiler Production Iron Removal Manganese Removal Poultry Feed Conversion Poultry Mortality Poultry Production Sulfide Removal Well Water Mississippi Water Sources