Chicken waste & well water

[bills]

Chick-a-dee, maybe the cap you are seeing, is not a well head, but the clean out cap for the septic tank? Have you ever opened it to see if there is a well pump, or water lines running down it? I just can't get over the short distance between the two...

 

[Chick_a_dee]

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Nope...it's the well head, we had a problem with our pump about a month ago, and had the pump guy round to fix it, he went down the well because the fittings had corroded that hooked up the lines down there, our pump is located under our house, our septic doesn't have a cap...yet, right now a lovely sheet of metal (not so lovely) sits over it, to mark out where exactly it is.

 

[pkeeler]

The chickens are not going to do anything to your well. Maybe if you were in an area with really shallow bedrock and you had a lot of chickens.

As for the person with their well right next to their septic. I would get that checked out, doesn't seem safe. It is possible that there is a clay layer between the septic and the aquifer and your well could be cased through the layer. But that is a lot to suppose. You don't have to drink well water to be exposed, showering actually exposes you to more contaminants than drinking (your body absorbs more easily through lungs than gut).

 

[LynneP]

....adding that i you use hydrated lime, ground limestone, Stable Boy, Stall-Dri and/or DE you are pre-treating the manure your animals produce...

 

[Chick_a_dee]

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We're on a rock shelf ... On the Canadian Shield, with A LOT of rock under us, in most places we can't even sink fence posts.

 

[Sylvie]

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Seriously... 100ft? Our barn's well is right in front of it, about 50ft maybe at the most, and it's potable. Our house is really old, and the well for the house sits about 10 ft from the septic field, and the water quality was 0/0.

We have our poo bunker about 300ft away from the well, in the foundation of an old milking barn that fell down well before we moved in. I think proper poop management is really important as well.

The well and septic being very close is common in our community. Here's why; the older homes had a well. Then they put in a septic. The well goes dry from the excavation from installing the septic, same as wells going dry when they bury electric lines to the house now. A new well is dug. It goes dry or has such a reduced capacity from home development in the adjacent area. A new one is dug and guess where the only available area with water is. Right by the septic. Also in the 60's when the interstate went in all homes north of the interstate had the wells dry up, including artesian wells. Our area goes with 100-200' drilled wells now.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

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Seriously... 100ft? Our barn's well is right in front of it, about 50ft maybe at the most, and it's potable. Our house is really old, and the well for the house sits about 10 ft from the septic field, and the water quality was 0/0.

We have our poo bunker about 300ft away from the well, in the foundation of an old milking barn that fell down well before we moved in. I think proper poop management is really important as well.

The well and septic being very close is common in our community. Here's why; the older homes had a well. Then they put in a septic. The well goes dry from the excavation from installing the septic, same as wells going dry when they bury electric lines to the house now. A new well is dug. It goes dry or has such a reduced capacity from home development in the adjacent area. A new one is dug and guess where the only available area with water is. Right by the septic. Also in the 60's when the interstate went in all homes north of the interstate had the wells dry up, including artesian wells. Our area goes with 100-200' drilled wells now.

Yeah, a lot of places are like that these days... ours is close simply because the well was close to the house, and its the original 1870's well, and they had to put the septic in and the closest spot that they could dig was right behind the house, about 15-20ft from the well.

Our house well isn't great, but it's not dry... our barn well is about 100ft deep, and FILLED with water, you could never drain this well it's almost impossible. When we get our new well drilled, it'll be further down in front of the house hopefully, far away from the septic.

 

[pkeeler]

We're on a rock shelf ... On the Canadian Shield, with A LOT of rock under us, in most places we can't even sink fence posts.

Well that is interesting. You are probably still ok. If the water column over your well intake is large enough, anything that got down there would be diluted sufficiently. If your well is shallow, I doubt there would be any problem with the number of chickens you are talking about. I would guess your ground will freeze most of the year anyway.​

 

[Chick_a_dee]

Quote:
Well that is interesting. You are probably still ok. If the water column over your well intake is large enough, anything that got down there would be diluted sufficiently. If your well is shallow, I doubt there would be any problem with the number of chickens you are talking about. I would guess your ground will freeze most of the year anyway.

LOL I am not the person who was asking whether or not their well water would be okay with their chickens... it just sort of morphed into how far away my well was from my septic.

 

[leah vanity]

I was looking for this answer so thanks everyone for posting opinions!