Antibiotic and Nutrient Losses From Turkey Manure Piles.

Turkey manure is stored in piles after each barn cleaning. Often these manure piles stay in place for several months before they are hauled away either for land application, burning, or other uses. There is a concern that these manure piles are the source of concentrated antibiotic and nutrient leaching to ground water. This study characterized antibiotic and nutrient losses both in surface runoff and through leaching from two turkey manure piles that have been spiked with concentrated antibiotic feed. The experimental set-up involved building an above ground sand box with two depressional areas (one in the middle and one all along the fringe), covering the sand box with a heavy duty plastic sheet, laying the perorated pipes in the depressions to carry the runoff and leachate out of the pile, and then piling up turkey manure on the sand box. Pipes from each manure pile carried runoff and leachate to two separate 55 gallon plastic barrels. Pipe along the fringe of the sand box mostly carried surface runoff whereas pipes in the middle of the sand box carried leachate. Both runoff and leachate in barrels were measured after each rainfall event and a sample taken for chemical analysis. Antibiotic tested in runoff and leachate were chlortetracycline, tylosin, and monensin whereas nutrient analysis included nitrate plus ammonium N and soluble and total P. Most of water and thus antibiotic and nutrient losses occurred in runoff thus indicating that manure piles shed water during rainfall events.