Composting of chicken manure for biofertiliser production: a case study in Kidal Village, Malang Regency

Abstract

Kidal Village, located in Malang Regency, has around 106 traditional chicken poultries with hens chicken population of 1,463,720 chickens, producing of 85.8 tonnes chicken manure per day. Currently the chicken manure is remained untreated and left on the bottom of the chicken cage over one-year period. Such practice has resulted odour problems especially to those area nearby the chicken poultry. The aim of this study is to investigate the potential of valorizing chicken manure for biofertiliser, as well as the impact of co-composting of chicken manure (CiM) and cow manure (CoM) with blotong (B) on the compost physic-chemical quality. Randomized block design (RBD) was used in this study with factor of feedstock composition and C/N ratio. Composting was carried out under aerobic condition, with manual turning over, for 30 days period. The results demonstrated that CiM, CoM and blotong has high organic content, but lower C/N value. Blotong has higher moisture content (MC), which is suitable as co-composting feedstock to increase MC value of the mixture. This study also observed that all treatments combination have similar trends in terms of changes in temperature, pH and MC during composting process. The quality of resulted compost were well within the Indonesian standard value for organic compost (SNI 19-7030-2004), indicating that composting of chicken manure or cow manure with and without blotong may become potential alternative routes for tackling pollution problems from the untreated manure.