The global poultry industry is undergoing many changes, one being the need for efficient disposal of its broiler litter (BL) due to a reduction in the land available for cost effective disposal. To date, Australian BL disposal has been achieved by selling the litter as a fertiliser to agricultural sectors. Research indicates BL and other poultry industry waste streams could be used as a food source for vermiculture systems, allowing the sale of vermi-cast as a biologically enhanced fertiliser and worms for protein. If this approach is economically viable then the poultry industry could reduce its environmental impact and operate more like a closed loop system. Integrated bio-systems using vermiculture, composting and waste-to-energy technologies have developed significantly overseas and have shown potential to solve many of the issues associated with poultry waste disposal.

As intensive animal industries expand in Australia, so too will the volume of manure that requires disposal in an environmentally responsible way. Broiler nutrition has traditionally been focused on maximising growth and improving feed nutrient utilisation. However consideration is now being given to environmental concerns. The extensive use of organic fertilisers (manures) on Australian soils has contributed to eutrophication of aquatic systems (Nash et al. 2003). Since land application of broiler litter is the primary disposal mechanism, it is in the industries best interest to become more accountable for the nutrients contained in their wastes. Therefore by improving the utilisation of nutrients and reducing their concentrations in the manure, the environmental burden of such wastes will be reduced.

The global poultry industry is undergoing many changes, one being the disposal of its broiler litter (BL) due to reduction in land available for cost effective disposal. To date, Australian BL disposal has been achieved by selling the litter as a fertiliser to agricultural sectors. Land availability has decreased due to encroaching urban development, legislative change, decreasing social acceptance, environmental quality issues, and increasing pathogen concerns. Alternative disposal options have developed significantly overseas and have shown potential to solve many of the issues facing BL disposal in Australia. Commercialisation of cornposting, vermiculture, anaerobic digestion and direct combustion for large scale BL disposal is still in its infancy for Australian conditions but has already been achieved overseas.

The success of value adding operations like vermiculture for the broiler industry is to some extent influenced by variation in the animal wastes resource. Broiler litter samples were taken from sheds under different management systems using a sampling technique designed to identify possible sources of variation in broiler litter composition. Analysis of broiler litter samples focused on chemical attributes that would impact on vermiculture, and these included; macro-nutrients, trace-elements, dry weight, pH, EC and gross energy. The results show low variability in the major parameters that could influence the conversion of broiler litter to a profitable resource in a vermiculture system.

The use of vermiculture to value-add to broiler litter (BL) has been seen as problematic due to the high levels of uric acid and salts in poultry manure. Results from this experiment indicate that these issues can be overcome with frequent watering over the first 8 days of the system's operation. The conversion of BL into vermicast was maximised with twice daily applications of 100 and 200ml of water. These frequent water applications also led to average total mortality being lower and healthier earthworms.

Wet winter conditions can create animal welfare issues in feedlots if the pen surface becomes a deep, wet, penetrable substrate. Feedlot pens with a clay and gravel base (N = 30) bedded with 150 mm (W15) and 300 mm (W30) depth of woodchips were compared to a control treatment with no bedding over a 109-day feeding period, while irrigated to supplement natural rainfall. The pad substrate was measured for variables which would affect cattle comfort and value of the substrate for composting. The penetrable depth of control pens was higher than both woodchip-bedded treatments from week 2, and increased until the end of the experiment. Meanwhile these scores were steady for W30 throughout the experiment, and increased for W15 only after week 10. Moisture content of the pad was higher throughout the experiment in the control pens than in the woodchip-bedded pens. In the control pens, the force required to pull a cattle leg analogue out of the pen substrate was three times that required in woodchip-bedded treatments. The W15 treatment increased C : N in the substrate to the upper limit of suitability for composting, and in W30, C : N was too high for composting after a 109-day feeding period. Overall, providing feedlot cattle with 150 or 300 mm of woodchip bedding during a 109-day feeding period improved the condition of the pad substrate for cattle comfort by reducing penetrable depth and moisture content of the substrate surface stratum, but composting value decreased in W30 over this feeding period duration.