Anyone has composted Chicken manure waste?

[olivialewis]

I read an article which talks about commercial scale chicken manure composting technology, all information are well detailed in this post, but still wondering whether it is effective to compost my chicken manure waste with other organic residues. Please share your ideas with me.

here is the link: http://compost-turner.net/compostin...n-manure-usage-composting-chicken-litter.html

 

[Birdsong 82]

Chicken manure is wonderful for gardens. But it does need time to aerate or it will burn your vegetables. After posting a thread about this and the responses I got said I would get better results and would not burn my vegetables if I just added it to my compost. So I’m going with that this year
Oh and

 

[olivialewis]

Dear Rachel, thank you for sharing your experience. I also will get started

 

[RWise]

Compost until fall, then I put it on fresh and till it in, but I have very poor soil,,,,

 

[Birdsong 82]

Compost until fall, then I put it on fresh and till it in, but I have very poor soil,,,,

I’ve heard of people using that method and I’ve also heard of people putting it directly on but of course not touching the plants. I’m sure all that has to do with the amount you use in the type of soil you have.

 

[Birdsong 82]

Where are you from

 

[Beer can]

When I plant plants in the garden, I dig a hole and add a good size shovel full of deep litter/chicken manure, cover it with a few inches of soil, plant, cover and hill with more soil. The roots have to grow down into the manure and have plenty of soil to grow in that isn't manure. I've never had plants get burned this way.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, Olivia, welcome to the forum. That article is really detailed but a bit hard to read. Let me try to simplify a bit without getting too technical. I'll ramble bit though.

When you compost you need greens (nitrogen) and browns (carbon). Microbes eat the carbons and use the nitrogen as a fuel, but return the nitrogen to the finished product. Those microbes need a little moisture to live and reproduce. You do not want it too wet for very long. Excess moisture blocks air flow and you get anaerobic action. Anaerobic is not good. If you get air flow you get aerobic action which is better. The ideal moisture is like you take a sponge, soak it, and squeeze out all the water you can. But don't worry too much about ideal, as long as you are in the general ballpark you will do fine.

There is an ideal greens/browns ratio the experts use. It's way too complicated for me to get into that much detail. Part of the problem is that a lot of greens also contain some brown and some browns contain some green. It's too hard to come up with what the actual content of green/brown is and be accurate, so we guess. Roughly a ratio of 1 green to 2 or 3 browns is considered close enough.

Some greens are kitchen wastes, pure chicken manure or other animal manure, or green grass cuttings. Some browns are dried leaves, chicken litter, and dried brown grass cuttings. Some animal manure, like cow or horse, can contain a lot of browns too. Notice that chicken litter is a brown but chicken manure is considered a green. If you clean out your coop and include a lot of litter you may wind up adding more browns than greens. Like I said, it can get complicated.

It is best to not put pure chicken manure directly on plants. Some plants like tomatoes or squash are easily damaged or killed while some others are a bit tougher. It's best to let it break down first. One method to handle that is to clean out your coop, bedding with manure, in the fall and spread that on your garden. By the time planting time comes around it will have broken down.

There are all kinds of ways for you to compost it; barrel composters, all kind of bins or piles, or even the deep litter method where the chickens do it for you. Not knowing what you are considering I won't try to go into detail. Just mix in some greens and browns and try to keep it slightly moist. Turning it helps but it is not necessary, it will still break down. If it rains and gets it really wet, don't worry. It will dry out enough.

You asked if it is effective to compost chicken manure with your other stuff. Absolutely, gardeners consider general compost to be black gold. Compost adds nutrients but to me a bigger advantage is that it improves the texture of the soil. It helps clay soils drain better and sandy soils to hold moisture better. Chicken manure in that compost makes it even better. as that article mentions a lot of the nutrients the chicken eats pass on through and out the rear end. Those nutrients really help the plants.

 

[jp57]

I keep my chicken manure separate from my regular compost. I also have a separate pile for horse manure. It needs to age before you can put in on plants. I add some fresh manure to my garden beds in the fall and it breaks down over the winter

 

[Foster's Freehold]

After I get my coop built, I'm going to add a compost run. Build a short hoop coop with a chunnel or direct access pop door and a human door. This way, I can add compostables to the pile at the front, repile it every so often and by the end of the coop, should be pretty close to done. Take it out, put it in a pile for a month or so that the chickies can't add to and it should be ready for any appliction.

The hoop coop will serve thrr purposes. It will give the chickies a way out of the coop in the early mornings as I don't get up at daylight , it gets me good compost which I will sell to help fund the addiction lol, and will be covered for winter so some dry warmish place for them to hang out in winter.