chicken manure

[urban chicks]

hi i was wondering what do you guys do with chicken manure? i heard that you cant directly give it to the plants because it is too strong. I know you can start a compost bin but i was wondering what are some other options for managing chicken manure.

 

[Spikes Chooks]

I use it as a drench.

I shovel it into hessian bags which are placed inside a large plastic bucket with a lid. When it's full, I tie the top, fill the bucket with water, replace the lid and let it stand for about 2 weeks. Then I tie a broom to the top of the bag to hold it up and let it drain. I use the drench as a liquid fertiliser. Works well.

I only have four chickens, so this is a good small garden solution, this may not be very pratical with a large flock.

 

[mandelyn]

We use a small amount to bait fly traps (instead of buying bait, use what the flies came for!) but other than that, we just compost it with garden trimmings and grass clippings. Mixing the greens in speeds the decomp process due to the heat, and that heat also reduces what sort of bugs will use it. Too hot for flies, they can only use the outer edges. We framed the bin out with cinder block, to reduce the amount of available edge.

We pulled about 2 tons of finished top soil this year. Next year we may start selling it by the bucket full. Seems the going rate for chicken based compost around here is $3-5 a bucket, if you bring your own bucket.