Egg Laying House Wastes
CHARLES F. NILES, JR., Vice President
Henry B. Steeg and Associates, Inc.
Indianapolis, Indiana
INTRODUCTION
The Berry Best Egg Company has an egg production facility at the outskirts of
Rockport, Indiana, wherein there are approximately 205,000 laying hens. These
hens are housed in 41 laying houses occupying an acre each. There is some variation in the dimensions of the laying houses, but each approximates a length of
190 ft and a width of 34 ft. Each laying house contains 12 rows of 209 cages each.
Four rows of cages are so arranged that the waste droppings from the birds housed
in the cages (two birds each cage) will fall directly into a six ft wide by four in.
deep pit 174 ft long.   There are three pits in each laying house.
The major source of wastes to be treated from this egg laying operation is the
manure which is deposited by the birds in the respective pits. At the time that our
firm was retained to study possible solutions to the waste treatment problem at this
egg laying facility, the chicken manure was removed from each pit once per day
by the use of brushes and squeeges pulled by an electric motor driven cable scraping or brushing the manure into a common cross trough for the three pits in each
house. The manure was discharged from the cross trough into a collection or holding tank for each laying house. The contents of the holding tank were pumped
into a tank truck and discharged to the upper pond of two-pond system.
A second source of wastes to be treated is the unconsumed drinking water
supply. A trough is in front of each row of cages into which water is discharged at
one end and from which it discharges at the opposite end to furnish the chickens a
fresh supply of drinking water. This water becomes contaminated with feed washed
from the bills of the chickens while drinking water. The waste drinking water was
collected in separate holding tanks (one for each house) and pumped to the manure
pits to help wash the manure from the pits. The third waste which must be considered from this production facility is the continual accumulation of dead hens.
The hens vary in age from 22 weeks old at the time they are placed in the cages
to a maximum of 82 weeks old at the time egg production frequency has dropped
to an uneconomic level. The majority of the hens live to the age of 82 weeks at
which time they are removed from the cages and sold to a food processor. There
are a number of hens which for reasons of health, environmental conditions or just
plain laziness do not choose to remain in this world for the full 82 weeks. An
average figure for the number of birds per day who die is 50. During the two-day
period of July 9 and 10, 1966, the extremely high temperatures (for southern
Indiana) were experienced. On these two days the mortality rate exceeded 1, 000
hens per day. This has been attributed to the limited ventilation of the laying
houses and the inability of the hens to receive sufficient oxygen and sufficient body
cooling.
Mr. Dick Berry, the President and General Manager of the Berry Best Egg
Company, was using large quantities of water to maintain the laying houses as
clean as possible in order to reduce the fly population and keep the odors from the
chicken manure to a minimum.    A review of the water use records indicated an
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