Chickens and Compost

[Juise]

What do you do with your compostable goods that are not chicken safe?

I have been throwing all my egg shells, (the ones I don't dry and crush, anyway,) onion and garlic skins / ends, potato peels, dried beans, and coffee grounds into a separate bin, a large cat litter lidded plastic container.

Once that was full, I figured everything inside was pretty well nasty and unappealing enough, so I turned my compost pile, dug a big hole in it, deposited my gross bin worth of unsafe chicken stuff into the bottom of it, and covered it all up with the compost heap. It was at least 2 feet down.

That was yesterday morning. They seemed to leave it alone, or at least only attack the top of it, all day yesterday. Well, today, I look out my window this afternoon, and they are all on the compost pile, and they have dug the crap out of it!

They have obviously been at it for some time, and I can see the egg shells that I had thought I had buried deeply enough, so surely all those other things have surfaced, too.

It's obviously too late to anything about that, I am just watching them and hoping to hell none of them get ill, but in the future, what should I do? Bury it in a farther away, completely different spot? They will more than likely follow me anywhere I go, especially if I am carrying a bucket,

so how far do I really have to dig for them not to get at it?

I would not like to throw compostable foodstuffs in the trash, obviously.

 

[Tigertrea]

You use your coop floor as a compost pile? How do you do that?

I'm still very new. My chicks are only 9 weeks old and have only been in their run for 4 weeks. But, I have been tossing most of my kitchen scraps (except onion/garlic/avocado/chicken or anything very mouldy) in their pen in the morning and let them pick at it all day. About once every 1-2 weeks I take a rake to the run and rake everything into a pile in one corner. So far it is mostly dead/dried grass and droppings in the pile but, They love making daytime resting spots in it and spreading the pile back out. I also noticed this week that I am getting some bugs in the pile now for them to scratch for.

I have no idea what will happen in the future. I will likely need to clean it all out at some point. Then it will go in a pile at the back of my garden to compost further and be spread at some point. I'll never get enough compost from my chickens and my kitchen to do much for my garden but, it will help ("garden" is kind of a misnomer. It is about 1 acre planted with a variety of veggies)

 

[AccentOnHakes]

You could make a compost bin rather than a pile so that the chickens can't get at it, or fence off a separate pile.

 

[Juise]

I suppose I could do that, it is just that this is a very small portion of the compost, so we are talking about a fairly small amount of goods to smuggle.

 

[Den in Penn]

To China Juise, and they would probably beat you there. You could try a wire frame on top of the pile. That would mean you have to level the pile a bit so it lays flat and they can't get under it.

 

[Juise]

We have a compost tumbler we haven't used in some time that I forgot about, I think I am going to get it back in action to take care of the unsafe scraps.

Thanks!

 

[Chickety Charcoal]

I use a compost tumbler for the same purpose. A lot less compost goes in it now that I have chickens though. They are walking compost tumblers.

 

[cladano]

I wonder if those items would be good for vermicomposting.

 

[Juise]

I do, too. I haven't done any vermicomposting before, but I'd like to. I just need to be careful to add one project at a time slowly, or my husband will freak

 

[Juise]

Lol, I can just imagine him, "WHAT!? Now you want WORMS!?"

He really ought to have known what he was getting into, I was in art school at the time, after all.