2019 ASHS Annual Conference

Enhancing soil quality and health, nutrient cycling, and reducing off-farm inputs are a few basic guiding principles of organic agriculture. Despite these principles organic vegetable producers still find it challenging to create a holistic production system that includes integration of plant-animal production while also reducing off farm inputs. Integrating chickens into organic vegetable crop rotations could help create a system where on farm energy and nutrients are recycled with the added advantage of enhancing farm diversity, land use efficiency, and profitability.

This study is a three year project established in 2017 investigating changes in soil properties, poultry health, and farm profitability from integrated chicken and organic vegetable production. Three integrated annual crop rotation treatments were designed: vegetable-chickens-cover crop (R1), vegetable-cover crop-chickens (R2), and vegetable-cover crop (R3). Each rotation was replicated four times. Throughout the growing season soil samples were collected and analyzed for chemical and physical properties, labile carbon, and microbial activity, and presence or absence of E. coli and Salmonella.

Fertilizer application was reduced by up to half for the R2 treatment plots (chickens integrated in the fall). This shows a positive impact of having an integrated system where off-farm fertilizer inputs could be reduced by integrating chickens in the fall and manure is uniformly distributed through the use of movable chicken coops. Soil organic matter increased in all treatment plots from the start of the project in 2017 to the beginning of the 2018 growing season. Samples collected in October 2018 show increased labile carbon in R1 and R2 treatments indicating that integrating chickens can increase the active soil carbon. Microbial biomass increased in R1 and R2 treatments by the end of the 2017 growing season. The increase in microbial activity and labile carbon show promise in enhancing soil health and nutrient cycling in integrated organic production systems. Samples collected at the end of the 2018 growing season did not show presence of E. coli 0157: H7 or Salmonella after having chickens on them for two seasons. This demonstrates low risk potential of chicken manure application on successive crops that follow poultry within a rotation system.

This study was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Partial funding for this study was provided through the North Central Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Graduate student grant program.