Hardwood Sawdust as Poultry Bedding - USDA Forest Service

the fresh bedding. With the shift to plastic poultry house equipment this is no longer amajor issue in the industry.Another underutilized, low cost source of wood by-products in many regions aregrindings from land clearings, often associated with resident and commercialdevelopments. In the present form this material is not uniform in composition, theparticles are too large and often from mixed species. Composting this material with otherlocal by-products may offer a treatment strategy to convert this mixed species productinto a potentially useful and cost-effective bedding material. Malone and Chaloupka(1983) found broilers reared on two types of composted municipal garbage had superiorperformance to those reared on pine shavings bedding. A Delaware-base recyclingoperation charges tipping fees for land clearing grindings and other nitrogen-base poultryprocessing plant by-products and produces quality compost that may be an alternativebedding material.In this study various management and treatment strategies were evaluated to alter“green” hardwood sawdust and other mixed wood residues into a potentially acceptablebedding alternative.4