Degradation Kinetics of Three Veterinary Antibiotics in Composted and Stockpiled Manure

Two typical animal waste management practices, composting and stockpiling, were evaluated for their effect on the degradation of three veterinary antibiotics (VAs), chlortetracycline (CTC), tylosin (TYL), and monensin (MNS). The VAs were applied to horse manure plots subject to composting or stockpiling, and core samples were collected over a period of time. Selected buffer solutions were used to extract the VAs and analysis for concentration was conducted with solid phase extraction (SPE) followed by high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS/MS) technique. The VAs demonstrated rapid dissipation within ten days followed by a gradual decrease in concentration until the end of the experimental period (141 days). All three VAs degraded more rapidly in the composting samples than in the stockpiling samples, particularly between 20 and 60 days of the observation period. Degradation of the three VAs generally followed a first-order kinetic model, and a fitted model with a calculated rate constant was determined for each treatment. TYL in composting showed the fastest degradation, with a calculated rate constant of $0.91day^{-1}$; the slowest degradation was exhibited by MNS in stockpiling, with rate constant of $0.17day^{-1}$. Calculated correlation coefficients ranged from 0.89 to 0.96, indicating a strong correlation between measured concentrations and fitted values in this study. Although concentration of TYL in composting treatment showed below detection limit during the test period, this study suggests that composting can reduce animal waste contaminants prior to field application as fertilizer.