This invention relates to animal litters.
One type of animal litter contains natural agricultural materials. These materials are chosen for their ability to absorb moisture and odors, neutralize high pH materials such as ammonia or amines and provide other beneficial effects such as the effect of chlorophyll as a deodorizing agent. Sunflower hulls are used as one of the natural ingredients for its sorption ability. The animal litter is prepared by grinding and then pelletized using a binder.
A prior art animal litter of this type is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,258,660 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,923,005. These patents disclose an animal litter formulation utilizing alfalfa as a deodorizing agent and sunflower hulls as a minor ingredient of between 10-35 percent by weight of the composition. A binder is used in the pelletizing processes.
The prior art animal litters and methods of making them have the disadvantages of being more expensive than necessary because of the required pelletizing binder and, in some instances, of using materials that are more expensive than necessary and of lower sorptive ability than desired. Generally, they use only a small amount of sunflower hulls and do not disclose the ability of sunflower hulls to serve as a binder if used in adequately large quantities as well as being useful in those larger quantities as a superior sorptive agent.