ygritte
Chirping
I wanted to share my compost run design, because I'm really enjoying the low maintenance and my chickens are loving the supplemental feed and scratch.
My chickens have run of the yard, but I built a run adjacent to the coop for when I'm in vacation or we need to lock them up, but not all the way up.
I built my three bin compost bin (from all scrap material... Hence the cobbled together look) at the same time and used it as a wall of the run.
There is a chicken side, where the chickens have access to it (if I want them to) and a human side which is a removable screen.
This way I can fill up one, block it off from the chickens so it can mature. Meanwhile I'm (and the chickens) working on the other side. The middle portion is for "brown material".
The chickens love it! They jump at all the fruit, love red bell peppers, and eventually also eat the celery and broccoli... Even coffee grounds.
Double bonus is they turn it for me. They scratch at it constantly and keep everything mixed up.
I do treat this as a true compost pile though. All compostable material goes in. I eat pretty heaven, but some pretty funky food has gone in without any ill effect on the birds.
The only real downside is that it will take me ages to fill up. We're at 4 months of daily putting food and weeds, any organic material i can find in and you can see there's maybe 2 inches of material?
My chickens have run of the yard, but I built a run adjacent to the coop for when I'm in vacation or we need to lock them up, but not all the way up.
I built my three bin compost bin (from all scrap material... Hence the cobbled together look) at the same time and used it as a wall of the run.
There is a chicken side, where the chickens have access to it (if I want them to) and a human side which is a removable screen.
This way I can fill up one, block it off from the chickens so it can mature. Meanwhile I'm (and the chickens) working on the other side. The middle portion is for "brown material".
The chickens love it! They jump at all the fruit, love red bell peppers, and eventually also eat the celery and broccoli... Even coffee grounds.
Double bonus is they turn it for me. They scratch at it constantly and keep everything mixed up.
I do treat this as a true compost pile though. All compostable material goes in. I eat pretty heaven, but some pretty funky food has gone in without any ill effect on the birds.
The only real downside is that it will take me ages to fill up. We're at 4 months of daily putting food and weeds, any organic material i can find in and you can see there's maybe 2 inches of material?
