chicken droppings for fertilizer?

[frog522]

Do chicken droppings have to be composted to be used as fertilizer? Can droppings that have dried and hardened (like the ones that are a week old) be directly used as fertilizer?

 

[rrgrassi]

They work great in my garden, but they do get tilled in before planting time.

 

[woodmort]

It's a "hot" fertilizer--meaning they are high in nitrogen and will burn most plants if used directly without composting and/or mixing in. I prefer to either put it on the garden in the fall or winter and till it in in the spring or dump it in an out-of-the-way place during the summer, let it rot, and work it in the following year. That being said I grew some of the best cole crops I ever had using fresh chicken manure I dumped out when cleaning a brooder--heads of broccoli and cauliflower the size of dinner plates. The nice thing about it is that it is relatively weed seed free, unlike cow, pig and horse manure.

 

[Smoky73]

you should let it settle for about a year before using so the nitrogen is not going to fry your plants.

 

[flockof4]

let it sit for a while or just use a little bit at a time and see how the plants react. If they don't burn add some more...

 

[bigoakhunter]

We add small amounts to our compost heap, that gets added to the garden in the fall after harvest ime, then tilled in. We also keep a pile of just chicken poop off to the side that we let set for a year then till in to soil when we till.