Investigation of energy-protein supplement production, using poultry litter and sugar beet molasses

This research was conducted to study the processing of poultry litter as animal feed supplement. Broiler litter (BL) was collected from a poultry farm and processed with heat treatments in two distinct experiments. In the first experiment, samples were treated in a dry heating system at three levels of temperatures including: 55 °C (for 10, 20 and 30 minutes), 65 °C (for 5, 10 and 15 minutes) and 75 °C (for 2.5, 5 and 7.5 minutes). Then the treated and control samples were studied for microbial counts. In the second experiment, samples of BL with or without sugar beet molasses (SBM) (55 BL: 45 SBM) were treated (autoclave) at 121°C under steam pressure of 115 KPa for three periods of time including: 4, 8 and 12 minutes, then they were studied for total microbial count. Results of first experiment indicated that dry heating system did not considerably reduced the microbial total count. Results obtained from second experiment showed that steam treatment at 12 minutes eliminated the bacterial population from the samples. Hence this treatment was accepted for the subsequently analyses where three treatments including: 1-BL (control), 2- treated BL, 3- treated BL+SBP were studied, using of a completely randomized experiment with 4 replications. The DM, Ash, EE, Ca and P were not significantly different among the treatments. Crude protein was 24.8, 25 and 19.7 for treatments 1, 2 and 3 respectively which was not affected by the steam treatment, but addition of SBM reduced CP content (p0.05). The steam treatment did not affect NDF and ADF content. Results of CP fractions, based on the CNCPS system, showed that fraction A was significantly (p0.05) different when estimated as percent of total CP. There were significant differences (p0.05) between the treatments for fractions B1, B2 and B3 as percentage of DM or CP. The in vitro study showed that gas yield from insoluble fraction (b), estimated OMD, DOMD, ME and short chain fatty acids were significantly different (P0.05) among the treatments. These results suggest that autoclaved broiler litter as a crude protein rich and autoclaved poultry litter plus molasses as an energy-protein supplement could be considered as ruminant feed.