1/21/08 Sanitizing with Propane

Sanitizing with Propane. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. For poultry producers - sanitation of poultry houses is essential. It's the way to prevent and control diseases that can reduce bird weight gain and livability. Destroying the pathogens that cause disease is often done with acids or chemical disinfectants. But both can be expensive and have other drawbacks. For instance - acids can render litter unsafe for reuse on fields. Chemicals can leave residues that make pathogens resistant to treatment. Fortunately - there is another option: killing the pathogens with propane-powered heat. Mark Leitman - Director of Agriculture Programs for the Propane Education and Research Council - says that's exactly what the propane-powered Red Dragon Poultry House Flame Sanitizer does. LEITMAN: It's a device that helps producers of poultry cut back on the pathogen levels inside poultry breeding houses. Essentially its flame torches that are mounted under a stainless steel hood. They're used to treat the floor of the poultry houses. They treat it with intense flame, about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and it moves along slowly and sanitizes that top surface of poultry litter but also reduces the ammonia levels and that improves the air quality so the new chicks that come into the house are coming into a more sanitized environment. According to Leitman - baby chicks respond to that - greatly benefiting the producer. LEITMAN: Primarily it's a decreased death loss in the critical first weeks of life for these birds, it's also improved feed efficiency and feed conversion rates. It allows them to bring more birds to market on less dollars so it can really make a dramatic improvement in a producers bottom line. And because the heat is generated by propane - Leitman notes the producer will enjoy all of the great benefits they've come to expect from the fuel. LEITMAN: We know it's a clean burning fuel, it leaves no residue, no toxic fumes so it's a real handy fuel  environmentally friendly fuel plus its available on most poultry farms already. Many of the poultry farms are already using it to heat the buildings so it's just an extension of one fuel to do a second application on the farm. Leitman says an equivalent chemical treatment could require up to two-thousand pounds of chemicals and could be two to five-times more expensive than the propane treatment. If you want to learn more about the propane-powered sanitizer - visit www dot agpropane dot com. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.