I have been watching kitchen composters for a number of years. The machines basically dehydrate the scraps you put into the machine and grind them into a finer substance that the company calls "dirt" but is actually pre-compost material. A number of brands have come and gone over the years. Recently, I became aware of the 3-gallon Lomi Smart Waste Kitchen Composter which is currently selling for $500.00, for the machine itself. But then you are suggested to buy compost activating pods for each batch, maybe around $0.30 per pod, and the charcoal filter to keep out the bad smells should be replaced after 45 cycles, and that filter costs you $45.00. The company claims that it takes a minimal amount of electricity, about 1 KWH per batch, or less on the economy mode. In short, not including the cost of the $500 machine itself. you can turn 3 gallons of kitchen scraps into a couple cups of dehydrated "dirt" in about 5 hours for about $1.50 per batch.
Without even guessing the results of my truly unbiased poll with no hint of bias in the questions, I suspect most people here on the BYC forums are more inclined to use a FREE chicken bucket in the kitchen and feed their scraps to the backyard flock.
My chicken bucket is just a plain old plastic ice cream pail with a lid. Been using it for about 2 years or more. If it starts to smell, I wash it. No need for a $45.00 charcoal filter every 2 months. The lid keeps any smelly stuff inside, but since I feed the scraps to the chickens every morning, there is really no time for our kitchen scraps and leftovers to get rancid and smelly. If Dear Wífe is cooking fish for supper, she puts the guts inside the chicken bucket and I feed the girls the fish parts that night, so it does not sit in the kitchen for any length of time.
My chickens love it when I show up with a bucket of kitchen scraps for them to pick through. One chicken will pick up a particular nice morsel of food and the others will chase her around the chicken run trying to steal it away from her. It's fast food of a different kind!
As far as composting, my chickens will eat the kitchen scraps and leftovers, process it internally, and poo it out a few hours later. That's even faster than the $500 Lomi composting machine!
Another benefit of feeding kitchen scraps as "snacks" to your backyard flock is that it will reduce your commercial feed bill. Plus, the chickens will give you fresh eggs every day. No matter how much you spend on the Lomi composting machine, it will never reward you with fresh eggs!
As far as actually making compost, the Lomi composter only dehydrates the kitchen scraps and grinds it up into a handful of "dirt" but does not actually compost anything in 4 hours. It is a pre-compost substance that you can mix into your soil, but it still takes time to compost. My chickens make my chicken run compost in about 3-4 months, but that is real compost full of life.
After having provided you with my totally unbiased observations on the merits of each method, I would like to share a very good YouTube video of the Lomi composter and who it would work best for. The CEO of the Lomi company tells you up front in this video that he believes feeding scraps to the chickens and making compost with the chickens or in old fashioned bins is still the best method. But his machine is aimed at people who live in towns and areas where you cannot have chickens and/or compost bins in your backyard. In theory, he states that it is good for the planet for composting whatever material you can to avoid flooding the landfills. Also, he states that their goal is to decrease the cost of the machine significantly over the next few years to make the machine a more attractive alternative to tossing those kitchen scraps into the garbage can.
Without even guessing the results of my truly unbiased poll with no hint of bias in the questions, I suspect most people here on the BYC forums are more inclined to use a FREE chicken bucket in the kitchen and feed their scraps to the backyard flock.
My chicken bucket is just a plain old plastic ice cream pail with a lid. Been using it for about 2 years or more. If it starts to smell, I wash it. No need for a $45.00 charcoal filter every 2 months. The lid keeps any smelly stuff inside, but since I feed the scraps to the chickens every morning, there is really no time for our kitchen scraps and leftovers to get rancid and smelly. If Dear Wífe is cooking fish for supper, she puts the guts inside the chicken bucket and I feed the girls the fish parts that night, so it does not sit in the kitchen for any length of time.
My chickens love it when I show up with a bucket of kitchen scraps for them to pick through. One chicken will pick up a particular nice morsel of food and the others will chase her around the chicken run trying to steal it away from her. It's fast food of a different kind!
As far as composting, my chickens will eat the kitchen scraps and leftovers, process it internally, and poo it out a few hours later. That's even faster than the $500 Lomi composting machine!
Another benefit of feeding kitchen scraps as "snacks" to your backyard flock is that it will reduce your commercial feed bill. Plus, the chickens will give you fresh eggs every day. No matter how much you spend on the Lomi composting machine, it will never reward you with fresh eggs!
As far as actually making compost, the Lomi composter only dehydrates the kitchen scraps and grinds it up into a handful of "dirt" but does not actually compost anything in 4 hours. It is a pre-compost substance that you can mix into your soil, but it still takes time to compost. My chickens make my chicken run compost in about 3-4 months, but that is real compost full of life.
After having provided you with my totally unbiased observations on the merits of each method, I would like to share a very good YouTube video of the Lomi composter and who it would work best for. The CEO of the Lomi company tells you up front in this video that he believes feeding scraps to the chickens and making compost with the chickens or in old fashioned bins is still the best method. But his machine is aimed at people who live in towns and areas where you cannot have chickens and/or compost bins in your backyard. In theory, he states that it is good for the planet for composting whatever material you can to avoid flooding the landfills. Also, he states that their goal is to decrease the cost of the machine significantly over the next few years to make the machine a more attractive alternative to tossing those kitchen scraps into the garbage can.