• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.63-82
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• 2009

This review was conducted to the study on treatment of poultry waste by earthworms, and the effect of feeding earthworms meal on the performance of broilers and laying hens, and safety of meat and egg. 1. The pro-environmental chicken house was building in Daegu National University of Education, Daegu city, chicken wastes will be turn into high quality compost by vermicomposting uses earthworms in the house. 2. The earthworm meal (EWM) has a high proteinic content and a balanced amino acid and fatty acid profile, therefore most feeding applications has been evaluated with mono-gastric animals. 3. The dietary supplementations of 0.2 to 0.4% EWM were effective in improve digestibility of crude protein of diet resulted improved broiler performance in broiler chickens. 4. The supplementing 0.2 to 0.6% of earthworm meal in the laying hens diet, improves the laying performance and egg quality, especially ratio of egg yolk n-6/n-3 fatty acids contents. 5. As, Cd, Cr, Hg and Pb were detected at level of 4.41, 1.23, 1.18, 0.00 and 3.39ppm in earthworm meal, respectively, but those were not detected in the chicken meat and egg. therefore supplementing 0.6% of EWM in the chicken diet, it still did not affect meat and egg safety. 6. These results indicated that vermicompositing uses earthworms good a subject matter in the pro-environmental animal husbandry.