THE HOG CONUNDRUM: WHAT IS CAUSING FEET DEEP GREEN SLIME TO FORM IN WASTE PITS THAT LEAD TO DEADLY EXPLOSIONS?

 

Manure foam: who could possibly think of that? But it exists. And it is not harmless.

What's worse, it can cause explosions, and worser still, now one knows how it forms or why.

But here is where the problem should cause scientists to pay attention.  The self generating foam - or at least it seems so - has already sparked dozens of explosions that have killed hogs and destroyed buildings. 

So far, there has been little to none government scrutiny or intervention in trying to identify what cause the slime.

What is happening in essence, is that mass hog farming concentrates waste in pits where very large amounts of the waste lays unprocessed.  With time and a little help from mother nature, the waste generates the slime, which in places can grow to a few feet in thickness. 

The waste contains hydrogen sulfide and methane, both highly flammable and explosive.  These in turn serve as propeller gases for the slime which rises from the half buried pits where the waste collects.  

But this is a new phenomenon.  And where does it come from?  

Apparently the culprit could be the high dosage of antibiotics in mass hog farming, and farming in general, causes the unfettered growth of deadly antibiotic bacteria, which leaves the animal in part through its feces. 

The other culprit, is the use of distiller grains, which are the by product, or mash, of the ethanol production process.  The discards of ethanol production, corn mash, is a popular and cheap additive used in farming, and it is mixed with feed.  

In fact, the use of corn mash as a feed additive causes the hogs to excrete high levels of undigested fiber and volatile fatty acids.  Those alone could give rise to the green foam.  However, some farmers say that the green slime is not present in all pits, even when all hogs are fed the same, mash added, feed. 

One of the remedies discovered so far, is the use of a potent antibiotic, Monensin, which if thrown in the slime mix, effectively breaks it up, by altering the bacterial mix of the foam. Nothing else seemed to work to make the slime disappear, or at least diminish.

Therefore, there is a lot to be said about using antibiotic and mash in feed, when it comes to mass farming, since it needs an even stronger antibiotic to kill what it generates.

Source : MoJo  5.17.13