Making this shift from defending an environmental issue to generating revenue, depends on a knowledge of available manure resources and what it is manure buyers demand. Manure must be tested periodically. Much of the variability can be reduced through careful sampling. These broiler growers were minimizing their costs and pricing the litter at their cost of removal. Cost minimizing manure production processes focus on the environment Figure 2.
Revenue enhancing manure production processes focus on re-use.
Manure is highly variable and can not be managed from a policy perspective as one problem. As stated earlier, manure storage and treatment processes produce different manure products. The policy target should be focused on nutrient concerns rather than the broad difficult to define concept of manure. Table 1 illustrates the nutrient composition of broiler chicken manure and manure products. The lines which represent one and two annual cleanouts per year show that small changes in management practices can change the nutrient composition of the manure products.