Our Increased Focus on Litter Quality

This past summer, we at Farm Nutrients shifted our focus to address one of the major challenges of chicken manure: quality. Historically, we’ve worked through manure that had varying quality as we moved from barn to barn or sometimes even within the same storage facility. We know this has been a frustration in the past and so we’ve decided to put in the work to provide a more consistent product for you! Here are some changes we’ve made to our litter management to give you the confidence you deserve when receiving our product:

Increased Sampling
Our first initiative to improving litter quality was implementing a more intensive and rigorous manure sampling program at all the sites we work with. In doing so, we’ve begun to develop a strong database that we’ve been able to use to develop charts on the various manure qualities. As correlations began to take shape, it became increasingly clear to us what moisture levels were needed to attain the best possible quality of manure in each location. Working with each site’s operations team, a unique plan has been put in place at each of our sites on how the manure should be handled in order to maintain quality and consistency.

Conditioning
Since we’ve started focusing on improving our product quality, we’ve realized we don’t always have control of the variables that cause a change in the manure quality. However, what we can control is what product is shipped out. When we receive manure that has higher moisture levels, we stop shipping product out of the barn to allow us time to condition the manure. We do this running the conveyor belts that carry the manure to the barn at a lower speed so it has increased time in the barn’s ventilation system or by manipulating it with drier manure to reduce the moisture level. We understand that the delayed delivery may have caused some concern, but these changes in our process have helped us make sure that you are delivered the consistent, high quality product you paid for.

We hope these changes we’ve implemented will give you the confidence you need in the product you’re receiving from us. We look forward to continuing to service you and help improve your soil health!