Full Compost Bin

[ScoobyRoo]

Do you know anyone that you can give it to? I'm sure there are gardners that would love to have your chicken poop/compost. Then you have room for more. Do you garden? You don't mention it. If so, til it in as mentioned by 1acre.
I'm fortunate to have a lot of room and a uniloader (and backhoe) which makes it easy to turn it over and move to the garden in the spring.

 

[Gunnygranny]

I like the idea of layering with the lasagna beds -- wish I would have thought of it earlier -- but will for sure clean out my raised beds and do it next winter. To much snow on the ground to do it this winter. So what have we done with our compost -- our bin filled up a long time ago. We took cement blocks and built a “frame” and everything is going into that for now. It is still freezing pretty good so we can’t even turn it at this point --maybe in a couple of weeks. We also have to be careful what we put in the frame --to many critters around, so the food stuff goes into the bin and everything else into the frame.
Thanks again for the suggestion about the lasagna beds

Rita

 

[mischievouschickens]

Henry'schickens :

Do you know anyone that you can give it to? I'm sure there are gardners that would love to have your chicken poop/compost. Then you have room for more. Do you garden? You don't mention it. If so, til it in as mentioned by 1acre.
I'm fortunate to have a lot of room and a uniloader (and backhoe) which makes it easy to turn it over and move to the garden in the spring.

Uniloader and backhoe? When can you drop by? Maybe you can help me get some serious work done!

We do garden, but the area in our yard is very small - probably 100 sq ft or so. It would be great to till what the girls give into an acre but we just don't have that much land. Unfortunately, we have fruit trees and bushes planted in the same area as the garden. I would think the fresh stuff would be too hot and burn the existing plants prior to the vegetables being planted in the Spring. Thoughts anyone?

The lasagna idea is fantastic as well as everyone else's suggestions! But would the rows or lasagna burn our fruit trees and blueberries, etc.? How far away would the piles need to be to not burn our existing crops? I definitely will not throw away the girls' fine work but I do worry about any aromas that may upset my neighbors. We do live in an urban environment and our neighbors are literally right next door over there, here, there and there.​

 

[City Gardener]

Dark Matter, I love your coop set-up (looked on your BYC page)!! Amazing!

 

[CityChook]

I simply pile the shavings in a corner of the yard where it's not going to bother anybody. I find that they seem to compost better when outside of the compost bin - maybe more exposure to the dirt/elements? Don't know. Mine doesn't smell bad at all. However, the shavings take a long time to break down. I'd recommend adding a fair amount of grass to it, turn it often and water it. That will help it break down faster.

I usually compost my shavings for at least 6 mo, usually more like a year, before adding to the garden. But I have been known to mulch the flower gardens with shavings fresh from the coop. I figure that they've been in there for 6 months, so it's not like they are fresh and super hot. I haven't had any trouble with it. However, I don't think I'd do it with my vegetable garden. Just my $.02

If you don't have the space or time to mess with it, I'm sure that you could list trash-bags of poo/shavings on craigslist and get ample response. Maybe even make a few bucks on the side.

 

[KingSpeck]

Around here we have a community garden area that has big compost bins. They donate food to foodbanks twice a week in the summer. They would take my extra shavings and chicken poop in a heart beat. Do you have anything like that near you? It would be nice to get rid of something you don't need and help someone else out at the same time.

 

[ecopepper]

Quote:
Oh love the brick idea I am going to do that next...we just got some hand-me-down pavers! Perfect!

But I love compost and if you have the space build another..if you are going to have a garden the compost will be gone soon anyways and you can move it for next compost build. I want to move mine but in Fl. the compost cooks quickly....still not enough to put in it...feast or famine...to much green or too much brown! It's like walking a tight rope!