Good morning! Does anyone have a compost pile in their run? I was thinking I wanted to do this and allow the girls to turn the pile for me. I have read some posts about the coffee grinds and eggshells and needing to be careful but are there any other issues to think of before I go about this endeavor? Thanks in advance!
I have a yard waste pile in my run. Grass clippings, weeds from the garden and stuff like that. My girls LOVE it!!!
I know they will turn it for it thats for sure, LOL We had a pile in our run but with nothing added to it except DE, If fact we still have one pile in there, and belive it or not it does not even smell , but the only thing that concerns me with it is when they get the bottom of the pile, i dont whant them to eat any molded food up that is tsill in it. so we ended up taking out 1 pile, the other pile does not have food that pile is actully from our gaots, lol But very good question, i am going to watch your thread and see whats the response you get.
From my experience, one of my chickens' favorite scratching spots is the compost pile. There have been several threads on this forum about dangerous micro-organisms/bacteria/decomposing materials in the pile, though, so maybe do a search (blue bar above) to see if you can find more information. I've seen folks recommend that the compost pile should be fenced off from the chickens. We don't put food in our compost pile (coffee grounds and egg shells go directly into the garden, chickens get most all veggie scraps if pup doesn't get them first) but we do use leaves/grass.
You can definitely put compostables in the run. As long as you keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't mold (which it generally doesn't, unless it's a LOT of wet stuff all at once), the chickens LOVE it. However it does not really constitute a compost pile The chickens kick it all apart into a thin layer, and it doesn't heat up. It will eventually rot down of course, but IME it will also tend to disappear into the soil of their run as it does. I would suggest raking it out when the chickens are done with it, piling it somewhere to *actually* compost, and starting a new batch in the run. Anyhow that's what I do and it works really well. Good luck, have fun, Pat
Thanks for the feedback...hadn't thought about the moldy food issue nor the fact that their *turning* is really spreading thus no heating up. Will definitely continue to add the weeds and clippings though...thanks again!
Not really a compost pile, but we do have a "poop pile" near the coop for when I shovel out the old pine shavings and poop from he coop, I dump it into a pile and it gets mixed in with the leaves and grass and eventually turns into a dirt material, which I believe it good for gardening fertilizer. Our chickens love scratching around in it and spreading it out everywhere!
