Anyone has composted Chicken manure waste?

[olivialewis]

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.

thank you so much for the details. Now i think i know a little bit about what factors should be taken into consideration when composting.

the green/brown materials you said, i know it relates to C:N ratio of the compost pile which will directly affect the generated compost quality.
C:N ratio is one of the important parameters in manure composting, especially in industrial composting facilities. But for home composting, without experience, it is really hard for me to measure the ratio.

thank you again for the points.

 

[Foster's Freehold]

thank you so much for the details. Now i think i know a little bit about what factors should be taken into consideration when composting.

the green/brown materials you said, i know it relates to C:N ratio of the compost pile which will directly affect the generated compost quality.
C:N ratio is one of the important parameters in manure composting, especially in industrial composting facilities. But for home composting, without experience, it is really hard for me to measure the ratio.

thank you again for the points.

Easy rule of thumb. Dig a shovel into the pile, pull out the middle, if it is slimy or has a rotting smell, you need more browns. It nothing is happening and everything still looks like when you put it in, it needs more green.