The profit of turning chicken manure into treasure is as high as 500 yuan / ton.

According to the China Animal Husbandry Association, there were about 8.79 billion broilers in 2014 and about 1.32 billion laying hens at the end of the year. Based on the fact that each chicken produces 100g fresh chicken manure per day, and broilers are raised for an average of 60 days, China needs to deal with hundreds of millions of tons of chicken manure a year, which is equivalent to the carrying capacity of 10,000 freight trains.

On the one hand, with the increasing trend of scale and low cost of the chicken industry, how to increase revenue and reduce expenditure has become a barrier that chicken enterprises urgently need to establish. On the other hand, the huge amount of chicken manure brings great pressure on environmental protection. In order to encourage aquaculture enterprises to develop circular economy, the state has issued a number of related policies in recent years: since 2006, the national "soil organic fertilizer promotion plan" has invested more than 2 billion yuan. According to the National Agricultural Sustainable Development Plan (2015-2030), more than 50% of future nitrogen fertilizer applications will come from organic fertilizers. The Ministry of Finance plans to subsidize 3 million yuan for each organic fertilizer demonstration project from 2014 to 2019. The Ministry of Commerce is also exempt from VAT on organic fertilizers. In addition to the production of organic fertilizer, chicken manure power generation, chicken manure maggot and other methods are also emerging, farmers are trying to find the most suitable way to "turn manure into treasure."

Raw chicken manure is packaged and sold directly.

High convenience

Profit 100 yuan / ton

The cost can be ignored.

The collected chicken manure is sold directly to growers as base fertilizer, or as feed to the surrounding fish ponds, which is the most common and fastest way to deal with chicken manure in chicken farms in China.

It is understood that at present, most broilers in Guangdong use flat breeding, which will be padded with about 3 centimeters of wood chaff as bedding material in the chicken house. In this case, the collected chicken manure is basically dry, in which the cushion is equivalent to adding excipients in advance for the post-production of organic fertilizer, and the price is about 10 yuan per bag (about 70 jin per bag) directly packed into bags. On the other hand, the chicken manure of caged egg breeder chickens is mostly pure chicken manure with high water content, and the price of direct packing is about 4 yuan per bag. Yunfu farmer Li Bao Biao, through this direct packaging of chicken manure for sale, a batch of broilers (10, 000) to produce chicken manure income is about 3000-4000 yuan.

"there are also some local middlemen who specialize in collecting chicken manure, who will come to collect chicken manure at intervals of 1-2 days." Huo Mingquan of Nanhai Jinsha Huacheng Chicken Farm in Foshan revealed that middlemen generally sell chicken manure to growers to grow vegetables and flowers. The composting fermentation of chicken manure is handled by middlemen or growers themselves.

Packing and selling chicken droppings not only solves the whereabouts of the largest amount of "waste" in chicken farms, but also brings additional income, which is a situation that chicken farmers like to hear.

"but growers' demand for chicken manure is obviously seasonal. The amount of fertilizer applied to farmland is large in autumn and winter, and the demand for chicken manure is high. When it comes to the rainy season, the sale of chicken droppings becomes a problem. " Zhao Zhiquan, technical director of Guangdong Yang Agriculture Co., Ltd., said that usually at this time, chicken manure can only be made into organic fertilizer by composting and other methods on the farm, which is currently the most feasible way for chicken farms to deal with chicken manure.

Made into organic fertilizer for sale

Moderate convenience

Profit 300-500 yuan / ton

The cost is 500 yuan / ton

Compared with selling chicken manure directly the profit after being made into organic fertilizer can be significantly increased. Li Hailin, director of the organic fertilizer farm of Heshan Xiganghuang Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd., said that excluding equipment depreciation, the auxiliary materials, electricity charges, and labor costs per ton of organic fertilizer production are about 500 yuan, and the selling prices range from 800 yuan to 1000 yuan, with a profit of 300 yuan to 500 yuan per ton. If raw chicken manure is sold directly, the price is only about 100 yuan / ton.

Although composting is not difficult, to build a large-scale, industrial production of organic fertilizer field, to achieve a stable profit requires a certain investment cost. It is understood that the Xugang Yellow Organic Fertilizer Farm was completed and put into production in 2008, with an annual output of 10,000 tons of organic fertilizer. The whole organic fertilizer farm covers an area of 11 mu, with a total investment of more than 2 million yuan.

In addition to investment costs, marketing is also a major problem for organic fertilizer farms. Li Hailin said that because growers' demand for organic fertilizer is unstable, they can only "fix production according to sales", that is, according to customer demand. In addition, the quality of organic fertilizer sold in the market is uneven at present. If the organic fertilizer with incomplete fermentation is purchased, the chicken manure will continue to ferment and heat in the soil, which can easily cause economic disputes. Therefore, in the case of market chaos, large-scale products tend to have more competitive advantages because of their stable quality.

The profit of chicken manure power generation is 450 yuan / ton.

Low convenience

Profit 450 yuan / ton

High equipment investment in the early stage of cost

If the amount of chicken manure is large, the efficiency of preparing organic fertilizer is not enough to digest. Thermal and biogas power generation are the remaining options.

"Shengnong has 1400 tons of chicken manure to be disposed of a day, and the production of organic fertilizer alone cannot be digested at all. To this end, we built a chicken dung power station. " Fu Ximing, executive vice president of Fujian Shengnong Development Co., Ltd., said that Shengnong has built two thermal power stations, which consume 640000 tons of chicken manure a year, and can generate 363 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a year. By burning chicken manure to generate electricity, it not only solves the problem of chicken manure pollution, but also transmits electricity to the national power grid. After burning chicken manure, it can also produce 50,000 tons of organic fertilizer (300-500 yuan / ton), with a total profit of about 450 yuan per ton.

In terms of biogas power generation, on April 19, 2009, the biogas power generation project of Beijing Deqingyuan Agricultural Science and Technology Co., Ltd. was successfully connected to the grid. In July 2015, the Minhe Biogas purification and Compression Project was completed. It is reported that the daily treatment of chicken manure in chicken farms can reach 700 tons, and it can produce 10.989 million cubic meters of biological gas every year, which can replace 12.8 million litres of oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 260000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

"but chicken manure power generation does not make money, mainly in order not to cause pollution." Fu Ximing said that Shengnong's chicken dung power station has a total investment of 420 million yuan, but its income does not match the huge investment cost. In addition, how to integrate power generation into the power grid system is also a big problem. It is understood that the investment in Beijing Deqingyuan biogas power plant reached 65 million yuan. The feasibility study of this project was carried out in the Ministry of Agriculture and other departments in October 2004, and the grid-connected power generation was successful in April 2009, and the intermediate coordination time was as long as 4 years, of which the grid-connected communication link alone took more than a year.

Wang Xianzhong, service director of Hebei Huayu Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd., said that chicken manure is the one that produces less gas among all livestock manure. In addition, there is a lot of stone powder in chicken manure, which will affect the operation of biogas equipment after precipitation. The treatment of a large amount of biogas liquid left by biogas power generation is also a very difficult problem, and it is not advisable to use biogas power generation as a way to treat chicken manure at this stage.

Other biological treatment methods

Convenience unknown, expected to be medium

Profit unknown, expected to be high

Cost of chicken coop equipment investment 1 to 5

In order to improve the utilization rate of chicken manure as much as possible, a variety of biological treatment methods are emerging. In recent years, occasionally farmers have tried to use chicken manure to raise maggots and earthworms.

Wang Xianzhong said his team is working on a plan to raise maggots with chicken dung. In this scheme, 1 jin of fresh maggots can be produced for every 5 jin of raw chicken manure. As the remaining chicken manure has been metabolized by maggots, it can be directly used as fully fermented organic fertilizer. Maggots can be dried and beaten, or fresh worms can be directly fed to chickens. As a good supplementary protein, they can save about 20% of feed costs. After all the chicken manure is treated, about 20% of the chicken manure is converted into animal protein (maggots), and the other 80% is organic fertilizer.

At present, this set of equipment to produce maggots from chicken manure is under development. Construction is expected to begin during the Spring Festival in 2016. The whole system includes fecal collection, heat preservation and moisture preservation, and fresh maggot separation device. If you want to completely absorb all the chicken droppings in the chicken farm, the area is about 1 beat 4 of that of the chicken house, and the input cost is about 1 big 5 of all the equipment in the chicken house. As for the feasibility of these methods and the actual benefits, there is no mature conclusion at present.