Composting holds promise for swine mortality disposal
Eileen Coite, Cooperative Extension livestock agent in Wayne County, and Todd Ballance discuss the composting facility (background) Ballance uses on his Wayne County farm to dispose of dead hogs. With Ballance is his son, Landry.
Photo by Dave Caldwell
A method of disposing of dead animals that is being demonstrated on a Wayne County hog farm could be a cost-effective alternative for North Carolina's swine industry and provide a way to dispose of large numbers of animal carcasses in an emergency.
Since July of 2002, Todd Ballance has been disposing of dead hogs, what the swine industry calls mortalities, on his farm just outside Fremont by composting them. Ballance was the first hog farmer in North Carolina to use composting to dispose of adult swine mortalities, said Eileen Coite, North Carolina Cooperative Extension livestock agent in Wayne County.
Coite said the late Mike Regans, an area specialized environmental education agent in Wayne, Greene, Lenoir, and Pitt counties, was instrumental in bringing composting to the Ballance farm. Regans, who died in 2004 from cancer, helped secure a nearly $43,000 grant from the North Carolina Pork Council to build a composting facility on the Ballance farm.
The grant was used to build a covered structure that is 128 feet long by 32 feet wide. It is open on the sides and has a concrete floor, while the interior contains eight composting bins that are 8 feet by 16 feet and four bins that are 16 feet by 16 feet.
Composting is widely used in the North Carolina poultry industry to dispose of mortalities and may be used within certain limits to dispose of swine mortalities. Coite said state rules allow the use of composting to dispose of pigs up to feeder size, in the 40- to 50-pound range. What makes the Ballance operation unusual is that composting is being used to dispose of sows, animals that weigh several hundred pounds.
Ballance has 5,000 sows on his farrow-to-wean operation. He said he loses two to three sows each week, while during a recent period of unusually hot weather, he lost 16 sows in a week.
Coite said that while composting of adult pigs is an approved mortality disposal method in some other states, that is not the case in North Carolina. A special permit was issued to allow composting of adult animals on the Ballance farm. Rendering and incineration are also approved mortality disposal methods in North Carolina, but both can be relatively expensive, and Ballance said there isn't a rendering service available in his area.
Composting is, of course, the natural degradation of organic material. Composting requires three elements: a nitrogen source, a carbon source and microorganisms. In this case, the swine mortalities are the nitrogen, while Ballance has experimented with several carbon sources. He tried both sawdust and straw, but both produced compost that tended to clump. The compost must be spread on fields, so clumping was a drawback.
Ballance is now using litter, the pine shavings spread on the floors of poultry houses to catch waste, from a nearby turkey farm. Because litter is a waste product, Ballance is disposing of two wastes with one operation. He places dead animals in the bins of his composting facility between layers of turkey litter. Each layer of litter is about a foot deep.
Not only does the litter work well, Ballance said, the price is right. It's free.
Ballance said the compost he produces, which looks like mulch, neither smells nor attracts flies or other animals. He said it takes about 210 days for a sow to decompose completely. Ballance added that he applies compost to his fields only twice a year and said it took two years to fill up the bins before the first land application.
While there is an initial cost for composting facility construction, there is virtually no cost once the facility has been completed. Ballance said a facility such as his has enough excess capacity that he could cope fairly easily with a disaster such as a flood or equipment failure that would result in as many as 100 dead animals.
Said Ballance, "It works better than we ever imagined."
-Dave Caldwell
Since July of 2002, Todd Ballance has been disposing of dead hogs, what the swine industry calls mortalities, on his farm just outside Fremont by composting them. Ballance was the first hog farmer in North Carolina to use composting to dispose of adult swine mortalities, said Eileen Coite, North Carolina Cooperative Extension livestock agent in Wayne County.
Coite said the late Mike Regans, an area specialized environmental education agent in Wayne, Greene, Lenoir, and Pitt counties, was instrumental in bringing composting to the Ballance farm. Regans, who died in 2004 from cancer, helped secure a nearly $43,000 grant from the North Carolina Pork Council to build a composting facility on the Ballance farm.
The grant was used to build a covered structure that is 128 feet long by 32 feet wide. It is open on the sides and has a concrete floor, while the interior contains eight composting bins that are 8 feet by 16 feet and four bins that are 16 feet by 16 feet.
Composting is widely used in the North Carolina poultry industry to dispose of mortalities and may be used within certain limits to dispose of swine mortalities. Coite said state rules allow the use of composting to dispose of pigs up to feeder size, in the 40- to 50-pound range. What makes the Ballance operation unusual is that composting is being used to dispose of sows, animals that weigh several hundred pounds.
Ballance has 5,000 sows on his farrow-to-wean operation. He said he loses two to three sows each week, while during a recent period of unusually hot weather, he lost 16 sows in a week.
Coite said that while composting of adult pigs is an approved mortality disposal method in some other states, that is not the case in North Carolina. A special permit was issued to allow composting of adult animals on the Ballance farm. Rendering and incineration are also approved mortality disposal methods in North Carolina, but both can be relatively expensive, and Ballance said there isn't a rendering service available in his area.
Composting is, of course, the natural degradation of organic material. Composting requires three elements: a nitrogen source, a carbon source and microorganisms. In this case, the swine mortalities are the nitrogen, while Ballance has experimented with several carbon sources. He tried both sawdust and straw, but both produced compost that tended to clump. The compost must be spread on fields, so clumping was a drawback.
Ballance is now using litter, the pine shavings spread on the floors of poultry houses to catch waste, from a nearby turkey farm. Because litter is a waste product, Ballance is disposing of two wastes with one operation. He places dead animals in the bins of his composting facility between layers of turkey litter. Each layer of litter is about a foot deep.
Not only does the litter work well, Ballance said, the price is right. It's free.
Ballance said the compost he produces, which looks like mulch, neither smells nor attracts flies or other animals. He said it takes about 210 days for a sow to decompose completely. Ballance added that he applies compost to his fields only twice a year and said it took two years to fill up the bins before the first land application.
While there is an initial cost for composting facility construction, there is virtually no cost once the facility has been completed. Ballance said a facility such as his has enough excess capacity that he could cope fairly easily with a disaster such as a flood or equipment failure that would result in as many as 100 dead animals.
Said Ballance, "It works better than we ever imagined."
-Dave Caldwell