how to compost chicken poop?

[Chickenaddict]

The way I do it is put in pine shavings/chicken poop, grass clippings,dirt I rake up from the chicken run, leaves and other raked up yard debris, old veggies and eggshells, toss a little garden lime in the mix makes the pine shavings break down faster, water and turn once a week. If ya let the pile sit a year it will be good to go. I usually keep 2 big piles going, one almost ready pile, and one just starting.

 

[Hope119]

Quote:
Where do you get garden lime and if you spend money on it, then how expensive is it?
Keeping two (or more) piles of different age is a good idea!
Thanks!

 

[Hope119]

And one more question:
how do you know what is "brown" and what is "green". Is last years pile of tall grass stems brown? And same sort of grass just pulled out this year is green? Everything from the kitchen is green? Is it that what ever started to decompose (let say died last year) is brown and everything harvested this year - green?

 

[rechena]

We recently started to make our own compost, and we had the ammonia smell problem, and after added a layer of straw the problem was solved.
we haven't watered for the past week and beneath the top browns layer is still wet and warm, we are rotating the pile once a week when we add the kitchen scraps.

Our question is about the chicken poop and the straw/wood shavings we use, we clean our coop every 3 days, it's a small coop and small backyard, so we like to keep things clean.
The straw and the wood shavings are full of chicken manure, can we just add it to the compost bin? won't it smell too much?
We haven't been adding because we think its too much, but it kind of disturb us to send that to the land field waste... our compost bin is 320L (84Galon)

Thanks for the help

Rechena

 

[bakerjw]

As mentioned putting a lot of straight chicken droppings on plants or a garden will overwhelm it with nitrogen. I like to let mine sit with grass clipping and shredded leaves and other materials for a few months. My chipper shredder makes real quick work of dried leaves and other lawn refuse although I don't put wood in the compost pile. Sometimes the pile gets too difficult to turn by hand so enter the old trusty rototiller. It mixes it up very nicely.

We have pretty bad clay soil here so the wood chips from the coop mixed in with the compost aid in getting the soil in a much more manageable state.

 

[OHmamma]

You can buy garden/yard lime at TSC or farm supply store. It is fairly cheap and a 20 lb bag goes a long way. You just sprinkle it on. You can use it in the barn/coop after it ha sbeen cleaned to reduce ammonia odor and repel flies. But keep the cooks out for a while and cover the lime with straw or chips before you let them back in.

If you are adding it to your garden you should not do it at the same time that you add fertilizer (poo) the chemical reaction may actually harm the soil. Fertilize in the spring before or after planting and lime in the fall after the garden is tilled under. The lime will sit the winter and leech into the ground where it will be stored until spring. The lime not only helps the pH but it also adds calcium and magnesium to the soil.

When you compost manure it is best to cover it with a palstic tarp to hold in the heat, this serves a few purposes. It makes it too hot for bug larvae to survive, kills the endosperm of any seeds left that may cause weeds, and helps deveolop the compost faster. I personally do not add pine shavings to my compost. Pine is a very acidic tree. I use straw or hay only which my chickens love to scratch and eat when they are missing green grass during the cold Ohio winters.....

 

[Akkamarie]

Seattletilth.org had some important information About composting that i found useful.

 

[CluckyCluck]

As the garden season ramps up, we at Mother Earth News want to let you... know that you may want to screen any hay, grass clippings or compost you bring into your gardens, to assure the materials are not contaminated with persistent herbicide residues (most often clopyralid and aminopyralid). As our reports included below indicate, these chemical residues can kill plants or severely stunt their production, costing gardeners money and time.

You do it exactly as I have been doing it. I pick poop every day out of coop and toss it out of their door. I rake it all nto a nice pile and leave it there for 2 weeks or more, every day I rake it into a pile (not a huge pile mind you) and after 2 weeks or so, it's soft, wet and breaks down so fast. Then I'll move the current pile to an aged pile and leave it sit. It really does break down very fast.

 

[workaholic90]

So I would just like to confirm....I can take just the poop (we have sand in the coop so it's pretty much just poop) and put in the woods near us and wait for a year and it will be composted? Can i keep adding the fresh poop to it and turn or should i have different piles for each dump? I also have some horse manure that's over a year old and was wondering if i can add chicken poop to it?

I have never composted before and we do not compost our food scraps yet so hoping this is fairly simple and i can just pile up out back!

Thansk

 

[workaholic90]

Also, we will ahve snow on the ground in about a month for 5-6 months, what shall i do then?