Chickens geting into the compost?

[bryan8]

Well on the back of our property we have a really big compost pile full of grass, leaves, hay, chicken poo, and a bunch of other stuffs. My chickens found this today and were scraching around through it. It's a big like 14x14 pile so it would be a pain to fense it in. Is it ok for my chickEns to play and scratch in it?

 

[Teach97]

ok...you don't have to flip it! They will stir it up and add more poop and eat bugs and seeds and yup...it is okay! The only down side is they do have a habit of spreading it out over a large area

 

[matthewschickens]

We throw all of our compost into our chicken coop and they love it!
It sounds like you have some happy birds!

 

[rhoda_bruce]

The only thing I put in my compost pile is coffee grounds, egg shells and soiled litter from under the roost....which is pine/cypress needles covered in poop. I don't go through the trouble of grounding up my egg shells, so that is why they are composted. I don't want the chickens to start eating that. Everything else from the kitchen goes straight to the chickens. Oak leaves are scattered in the run......I find the chickens compost faster than the compost pile.

 

[fowlmood]

My chickens absolutely adore playing in the compost pile! My problem was keeping them out of my grapes.

 

[BridgeTea]

I put my (3-sided) compost pile just a few feet from the birds' covered run. When we open the run's gate for everybody to get outside and free-range for a bit, they stampede over each other to climb to the top of the compost pile and scratch around in there and see what treasures we have put in since yesterday! If chickens could smile, I'm pretty sure this would be the time.

It's a win-win situation. They stir the pile for me, and I don't have to remember exactly which veggie peels they like. Let them sort it out.

 

[deanna&rich]

My compost is in a bin made of four pallets ... the girls can fly in there if they want, but mostly they love to scratch all around it ... all the best bugs are there!!

 

[KandJsmama]

My chickens are compost-junkies. I just look at it as their personal playground at this point.

 

[patman75]

When my girls found the compost pile they leveled it in less than 2 days. It was 4X4X3.5T, it turned into 10X10X2T. They did a great job turning it over.

 

[New adventure]

My chickens have been composting for me all summer and now they have discovered the goat pen. I had planned on cleaning out all the old bedding (deep litter)this week but the chickens and guineas have done it for me. Almost a foot deep and it was all scraped down to dirt and pulled out into the yard. All I have to do now is put in the new straw bales and we're set for winter.

I wonder what other chores I can delegate to my little helpers!