He says poultry manure seems to give off less ammonia than previously thought. He uses small wind tunnels and micrometeorology techniques to monitor ammonia losses from manure placed on fields. Meisinger is with the ARS Environmental Chemistry Laboratory in Beltsville. This lab, along with ARS' Pasture Systems and Watershed Management Research Laboratory in University Park, Pennsylvania, develops farm practices that protect the environment and food supply, with emphasis on the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Phillip A. Moore, Jr., an ARS soil scientist in Fayettville, Arkansas, has found that ammonia loss is reduced if alum is mixed with poultry litter in the chicken houses.
Poultry litter is a mix of bedding and manure.
Alum, or aluminum sulfate, is a mild acid that lowers the pH of litter, reducing ammonia volatilization in the chicken house and when the litter is applied to the field. Alum also changes the phosphorus in the litter to a form that is less soluble in water. But Meisinger warns that alum is only a short-term solution. Land Another soil scientist, Eton E. Codling, who is also at the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory, is investigating the effects of mixing alum residue from a drinking water treatment plant into chicken litter before applying it to cornfields at two farms on the Eastern Shore. Codling chose the farms after conducting a survey in 1997 of 10 Eastern Shore farms that have applied chicken litter to their fields for more than 25 years.