Our chicken adventure began this spring, and now we have a flock of 9 chickens, aged 2 to 5 months. This began with building a coop and so on, and if you're interested in that, I have a story of the build in my coop page, you can find a link to it under my avatar.
Then on to the subject of this post. 9 chickens produce a fair amount of poop, and I'm strongly against just throwing such things away with mixed garbage, so I needed a way to dispose of the stuff neatly, and hopefully get something useful out of it. Here in Finland, it's pretty cold during winter, so a basic compost pile isn't really an option for anything else than breaking down leaves over the course of 5 years. What we use here, are hot composters. Basically just an insulated box that you compost in. Mine was finished about 5 weeks ago, and I'm absolutely in love with the process of composting, and I'd like to share a bit about the benefits of hot composting.
Here's a bried description of the composter I built for this task, if you're not interested in it's structure, you can just skip this paragraph. The measurements are about 90*90 centimeters, about 3ft*3ft. It's about a meter high. The bottom is 19mm hardware cloth layered with 7mm rodent netting, and it's open to the ground. The sides and lid are pine boards, as of yet unpainted, but they really do need a coat of paint. On the inside, the sides have 50mm of polystyrene insulation and the lid has 100mm of the stuff. There's a plastic tarp on the inside of this. On the bottom, there's a 75mm drainpipe that I've drilled full of holes to allow airflow, the ends are covered in the 7mm rodent netting. The upper half of the front is removable to allow for easy emptying and turning. In the middle there's a separator that divides the box into two equally large areas, one to be used at a time while the other one rests. It should hold about 600 liters of compost, or a bit over 20 cubic feet in total.
This picture is about a week after starting the compost.
Now you have a pretty good grasp of the compost I'm using. Then on to what we compost. Now, during summer time, the lawn grows pretty quickly, so we're mowing it quite a bit, and we like to give the clippings to the chickens. Every few weeks we empty the clippings from the run and throw them to the compost, along with any poop or left over food that's in there (We feed kitchen scraps by hiding them in the clippings for the chickens to scratch out). Every day, we clean from under the roosts, this results in a mix of poop, peat moss and pine shavings. We use a 2:1 mix of peat moss and pine shavings as bedding. All leftover food is fed either to the chickens or dogs, unless it's spoiled in which case it goes directly to the compost. Along with all this, any other garden scraps that aren't cycled through the run are composted.
As mentioned, we started composting 5 weeks ago. Every day when I take the spent bedding from cleaning under the roosts, I turn the compost a bit, so it's turned a lot more often than what people recommend. Because of the bedding, the stuff we add is pretty dry, so I wet the compost pretty heavily, both with water and to the displeasure of my better half, with a organic nitrogen rich liquid we humans produce ourselves. For the past few weeks, I've been having a constant steam going on in there. I haven't measured temperatures at the center, but I have a thermometer at the very top of the divider, and it's showing 10 degrees Celsius higher than the outside air constantly. So far, the level of the compost has stayed pretty nicely at half full and I'm only using one side of the compost, so this temperature is measured over a foot from the pile. Also, because the level isn't rising that much anymore, it means the decomposing is happening at the same rate as I'm adding stuff. Here is a picture of how the stuff is looking right now.
As you can see, the breakdown process is pretty far along, in just 5 weeks. The grass on top was added a few days earlier and mixed a bit with the previous compost.
Once the left side of the compost is full, I'm going to leave it to rest while the right side is filled. This should give it enough time to mature, and help contain moisture and heat inside the box during winter. Speaking of winter, composts freezing is a big issue around here, with -20deg C for weeks not being uncommon. I'm hoping that the level of activity added from the chicken manure will help keep the compost active throughout the colder season, but that remains to be seen. I'm a bit worried, because I won't be getting any nitrogen rich greens to add during that time. Hopefully kitchen waste will be enough.
One concern with composting edible things, is rodents and other critters. Our neighbor catches quite a few rats and mice, so they are present, but so far I've seen no signs of them around or in the compost, so the rodent netting seems to be doing it's job. Smells have not really been an issue either, other than if I go overboard with adding moisture. Then the compost will smell a bit bad for a few days, but it's only noticeable about 5 meters from the box. Too moist composts should be avoided anyway, because then the material will rot instead, and that is not desirable. You wan't an aerobic process to break everything down.
So, if you're looking for a efficient way to handle all that poop your little fuzzybutts put out, this is my suggestion. I'm thinking that in a warmer climate, the process will be even faster than what I've described here. And it will provide a good way to put that poop and spent bedding into use in your garden, instead of just tossing it.
I'll try to keep updating on the progress regularly, especially how it fares through the winter once we get there.
Then on to the subject of this post. 9 chickens produce a fair amount of poop, and I'm strongly against just throwing such things away with mixed garbage, so I needed a way to dispose of the stuff neatly, and hopefully get something useful out of it. Here in Finland, it's pretty cold during winter, so a basic compost pile isn't really an option for anything else than breaking down leaves over the course of 5 years. What we use here, are hot composters. Basically just an insulated box that you compost in. Mine was finished about 5 weeks ago, and I'm absolutely in love with the process of composting, and I'd like to share a bit about the benefits of hot composting.
Here's a bried description of the composter I built for this task, if you're not interested in it's structure, you can just skip this paragraph. The measurements are about 90*90 centimeters, about 3ft*3ft. It's about a meter high. The bottom is 19mm hardware cloth layered with 7mm rodent netting, and it's open to the ground. The sides and lid are pine boards, as of yet unpainted, but they really do need a coat of paint. On the inside, the sides have 50mm of polystyrene insulation and the lid has 100mm of the stuff. There's a plastic tarp on the inside of this. On the bottom, there's a 75mm drainpipe that I've drilled full of holes to allow airflow, the ends are covered in the 7mm rodent netting. The upper half of the front is removable to allow for easy emptying and turning. In the middle there's a separator that divides the box into two equally large areas, one to be used at a time while the other one rests. It should hold about 600 liters of compost, or a bit over 20 cubic feet in total.
This picture is about a week after starting the compost.
Now you have a pretty good grasp of the compost I'm using. Then on to what we compost. Now, during summer time, the lawn grows pretty quickly, so we're mowing it quite a bit, and we like to give the clippings to the chickens. Every few weeks we empty the clippings from the run and throw them to the compost, along with any poop or left over food that's in there (We feed kitchen scraps by hiding them in the clippings for the chickens to scratch out). Every day, we clean from under the roosts, this results in a mix of poop, peat moss and pine shavings. We use a 2:1 mix of peat moss and pine shavings as bedding. All leftover food is fed either to the chickens or dogs, unless it's spoiled in which case it goes directly to the compost. Along with all this, any other garden scraps that aren't cycled through the run are composted.
As mentioned, we started composting 5 weeks ago. Every day when I take the spent bedding from cleaning under the roosts, I turn the compost a bit, so it's turned a lot more often than what people recommend. Because of the bedding, the stuff we add is pretty dry, so I wet the compost pretty heavily, both with water and to the displeasure of my better half, with a organic nitrogen rich liquid we humans produce ourselves. For the past few weeks, I've been having a constant steam going on in there. I haven't measured temperatures at the center, but I have a thermometer at the very top of the divider, and it's showing 10 degrees Celsius higher than the outside air constantly. So far, the level of the compost has stayed pretty nicely at half full and I'm only using one side of the compost, so this temperature is measured over a foot from the pile. Also, because the level isn't rising that much anymore, it means the decomposing is happening at the same rate as I'm adding stuff. Here is a picture of how the stuff is looking right now.
As you can see, the breakdown process is pretty far along, in just 5 weeks. The grass on top was added a few days earlier and mixed a bit with the previous compost.
Once the left side of the compost is full, I'm going to leave it to rest while the right side is filled. This should give it enough time to mature, and help contain moisture and heat inside the box during winter. Speaking of winter, composts freezing is a big issue around here, with -20deg C for weeks not being uncommon. I'm hoping that the level of activity added from the chicken manure will help keep the compost active throughout the colder season, but that remains to be seen. I'm a bit worried, because I won't be getting any nitrogen rich greens to add during that time. Hopefully kitchen waste will be enough.
One concern with composting edible things, is rodents and other critters. Our neighbor catches quite a few rats and mice, so they are present, but so far I've seen no signs of them around or in the compost, so the rodent netting seems to be doing it's job. Smells have not really been an issue either, other than if I go overboard with adding moisture. Then the compost will smell a bit bad for a few days, but it's only noticeable about 5 meters from the box. Too moist composts should be avoided anyway, because then the material will rot instead, and that is not desirable. You wan't an aerobic process to break everything down.
So, if you're looking for a efficient way to handle all that poop your little fuzzybutts put out, this is my suggestion. I'm thinking that in a warmer climate, the process will be even faster than what I've described here. And it will provide a good way to put that poop and spent bedding into use in your garden, instead of just tossing it.
I'll try to keep updating on the progress regularly, especially how it fares through the winter once we get there.
