Chicken Run Composting for Garden questions

[gtaus]

Another source of material is used coffee grounds from coffee stands. I have an agreement with 1 stand in our little town where I get all the grounds and I provide clean plastic buckets and rotate filled ones with empty ones a couple times a week. Buckets come from local grocery store bakeries or restaurants.
The grounds go into 1 of 2 piles with coop litter and wood chips and the whole thing is turned about once a month. I don't use grass clippings because I don't have a bagger on my mower. The chickens visit the piles as well. One pile is put onto raised beds in the fall, the other in the spring. In lucky years, I also get old cow manure from a slaughter plant down the street.

Sounds like you have some good sources for free composting material. I don't live in town and it would not make much sense for me to go to town - spending time and gas money - to pick up free composting waste material. But I do think it's great that there are businesses that will work with you on their waste products. I'm sure it's a win-win for both parties and those relationships tend to work out much better in the run.

I hope to find a source of cow manure, that would be great, but the people we know that do have cattle are too far away. Chicken manure is great - if you can wait for it to cool down. I just need more patience. Anyway, my chicken run deep litter is coming along fine.

 

[OlympicChick]

We just found connections for getting free horse manure, and free beer spent grains. The chickens don't eat the hops, so those go into a separate pile, but they love the spent barley. I just throw it into the run, and freeze the extra. The horse manure we are using right now to create new raised beds, but I might bring some composted manure into the run, just to increase the biodiversity in the soil there.

 

[SAPPER7]

This is my first year with laying hens, and I have been learning a lot. I thought maybe the leaves would break up and decompose fast because I mow them up with my riding lawn mower and collect them in the grass bins. However, the leaves are not very mulched up that way. They are not shredded into bits like they might be coming out of a real leaf shredder. The riding mower acts more like a giant vacuum cleaner. So, not being shredder as much as I wanted, and then spread out all over the chicken run, I'm not sure I'll be seeing any fast composting of the material.

The wood chips in the chicken coop don't show much sign of composting, but I keep the deep wood chip litter dry, not wet. The chicken poo, until this winter, was constantly disappearing into the litter as fast as the chickens made it. To encourage even more turning of the bedding, I would throw their chicken scratch on the coop bedding. When winter came and the temps dropped, and stayed, at about 10F, then the chicken poo started freezing on top of the wood chips directly under the roosts. Because it is frozen, it does not smell at this time. But I have been warned that will change when we get our spring thaw.

I am aware that tilling wood shavings into the soil will rob the soil of nitrogen, but would I be able to use the wood chips with chicken poo as a top mulch in the raised beds, or would the chicken poo still be too hot this spring?

And yes, I am thinking that if the grass, wood chips, and leaves spread out in the chicken run don't show much signs of composting this spring, I will probably rake every thing out and put it into pallet compost bins. Then maybe just use a layer of wood chips in the chicken run over the dirt.

But I am wondering if anyone uses something like a mini tiller to till up the litter (grass, wood chips, leaves) on top of the dirt soil and if that helps with the composting in the chicken run. I would not go down into the soil itself, just the top layers of litter.

I use hay in the coop vs wood chips. I do use wood chips in the laying boxes BC my hens seem to prefer it over hay. When I clean out the coop, the poop covered hay goes directly to my compost pile. The hay definitely breaks Dow way faster than the wood chips. I started a pile around the end of summer, beginning of fall last year flipping and adding more clean out to the pile throughout the fall thru winter and added it to my garden (tilling) in Feb and my garden is taking off like a wildfire! I clean my coop out about once monthly adding a new hay layer! Additionally, I took the first 6inches of will off the chicken run to start the next compost pile , repeating this process which will be ready for the fall gardening.

hope this is helpful

 

[gtaus]

When I clean out the coop, the poop covered hay goes directly to my compost pile. The hay definitely breaks Dow way faster than the wood chips. I started a pile around the end of summer, beginning of fall last year flipping and adding more clean out to the pile throughout the fall thru winter and added it to my garden (tilling) in Feb and my garden is taking off like a wildfire!

I have learned a lot since I posted this thread in 2020. I have converted my entire chicken run into a chicken run composting system. The chickens do all the work for me, scratching and pecking the litter in the run, breaking it down. I never bother to till the chicken run litter like I thought I would.

I now have way more compost ready to harvest in the chicken run than I can use. It's like a never-ending bank of black gold compost just sitting there waiting to be harvested. I continually add to the chicken run compost system, even if there is more compost in there than I can use. I have even given away some compost to my gardening neighbors.

I have more than doubled the number of my raised garden beds for growing food. With the chicken run compost added to my raised beds, my productivity is through the roof. I plan on building another 2 or 4 pallet wood raised garden beds this spring.

My original idea was to dump lots of chicken run compost into the raised beds in late fall, and let the compost cool down and age over the winter months. That worked fine. But now, I have so much aged compost in the chicken run, that I don't even have to let it sit for a cool down period anymore. I just rake away the top 6 inches, or so, and harvest the compost layers underneath. Those lower layers of compost are garden ready. So, now I have ready to use compost anytime of the year.

FWIW, I switched from using wood chips as deep bedding in the chicken coop to using paper shreds for the last 2 years. The paper shreds compost very fast, maybe only a couple of months in the chicken run compost system, compared to wood chips which take many months more.