02/22/2005

Search On for Propane Alternatives for Poultry Farms

AUBURN, Ala. — If you think skyrocketing fuel prices are hitting you hard in the wallet, just put yourself in poultry growers’ boots. Fuel for space heating is typically the single greatest annual operating expense for broiler producers in the U.S., and number-crunching by Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station (AAES) economists at Auburn University shows that record-high prices for propane to heat broiler houses are sending poultry farmers’ production costs through the roof.

According to data compiled by AU agricultural economist Gene Simpson, the cost of heating a single poultry house in Alabama topped $5,800 in 2004, up 49 percent from a year earlier, 107 percent from five years ago and a whopping 383 percent from 1994. For a grower with four houses, a propane bill of $23,200 in 2004 represented an $8,400 increase over 2003.

And the 2004 figures, Simpson notes, were calculated based on a propane price of 91 cents per gallon, which was the price growers were paying when he began his analysis. By the time the final numbers had been tallied, the price in some areas had soared another 20-30 cents.

Yet even as energy costs have spiraled upward, prices farmers get for their birds during that same decade have remained relatively constant, averaging 4.5-5.5 cents per pound.

Finding lower-cost alternatives to propane is a key area of research being conducted by AAES scientists at Auburn University, who in two separate studies are determining whether a couple of waste products—namely recycled motor oil and poultry litter—can be used to heat poultry barns and possibly give farmers cost-effective alternatives to propane.

The motor oil research project, under way in north Alabama, is using furnaces that have been modified to burn recycled motor oil instead of propane or natural gas to heat poultry houses. A poultry producer in the private sector actually came up with the concept, and AU researchers are helping further refine the process.
Preliminary indications are that in addition to reducing the costs of heating poultry houses by as much as 50 to 60 percent, the use of recycled motor oil also improves in-house bird performance, due largely to improved air quality, said researcher Jim Donald, AU biosystems engineer. Further testing on this process is being carried out this winter.

Meanwhile, at Auburn, AAES scientists are converting poultry litter into pellets and then testing the pellets to determine whether they can be burned as an energy-efficient and cost-effective heat source for poultry barns and greenhouses.

In research led by AU biosystems engineer Oladiran Fasina and agronomist David Bransby, scientists are determining whether the pelletized poultry litter—as well as pellets made from peanut hulls and bioenergy crops such as switchgrass—will burn in a specially designed furnace to heat greenhouses and poultry houses.

Poultry litter is a mixture of manure and poultry house bedding material, and in Alabama, the poultry industry produces 1.5 million to 2 million tons of it annually. Used for years as a source of cheap fertilizer, poultry litter has helped turn pastures in heavy poultry-producing areas into lush, productive fields for cattle and hay, but the nutrient content of the litter has become too much of a good thing. Excess phosphorus from the litter applied to pastures becomes a pollution source that runs off into streams and other bodies of water.

If successful, the litter-as-fuel process, besides giving producers an alternative to propane, would be an environmentally sound and highly efficient way to manage poultry litter. Pelleting reduces three cubic feet of poultry manure down to one cubic foot, which makes litter easier to store and transport for sale to farmers in areas of the state where poultry production is limited and such litter is not readily available.

The litter research project is part of an Alabama Legislature-funded agricultural initiative at AU that calls for the development of new products from and new uses for poultry litter.

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News from:

Office of Ag Communications & Marketing

Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu
Contact Jim Donald, 334-844-4181 or donaljo@auburn.edu
Contact Gene Simpson, 344-844-3514 or simpseh@auburn.edu
Contact Oldiran Fasina, 334-844-3574 or fasinoo@auburn.edu

For immediate release