Composting chicken run

[gtaus]

unsifted Donaghy compost

I have never heard of Donaghy compost, but will assume it's just unsifted compost at this point.

I have been sifting my compost because I literally throw just about anything organic into my chicken run compost system. That includes bones, fish guts, twigs, etc... and that stuff I would not really want in my raised beds. The bones and branches work themselves down into the finished compost layer, but of course they take a lot longer to decompose.

I live on a lake and will throw the fish remains, after cleaning the fish, into the chicken run. The chickens will eat some of it, and most of the rest just gets covered up and buried into the compost on it's own, where I assume the worms will eat the rest of it. I don't like to leave fish remains on top of the compost for the night because I think it might attract varmints. So I will bury those fish remains into the compost before they start to smell.

Before I had chickens, I would just bury the fish remains in the garden and in a couple of weeks the remains would be magically gone. With chickens, they get first crack at whatever they want to eat.

Same goes for kitchen scraps, which I usually only fed to them in the morning. If anything remains at night when I put the chickens in the coop, I will just throw some compost on the scraps to cover it or bury it in a small hole in the chicken run compost.

 

[Sally PB]

Loving the compost talk. Makes spring feel closer.

I don't sift my compost. Like @BReeder! said he does, I mostly use the compost as mulch. This spring will be my first time of having enough compost to use in potting soil. I'll probably pick out the bigger chunks and break up clods as I find them.

We move our coop and run down hill by the garden in the spring, and then up close to the house in the fall. So I have two areas to rake up. I'm sure hubby would like the side yard area by the house to be grass and nice looking again, so I'll rake off what I can for the garden and reseed. The area down hill will be "started" for composting this summer and I'll rake that up in the fall.

Can't wait until the compost bins have thawed enough to turn. I have about 3-4 cubic feet of finished compost in one bin. I have a second bin just waiting to be turned, and it'll be done about 6 weeks later.

 

[vpatt]

Donaghy compost??

 

[JCaseyHammond]

yes, I do. Also keeps the dust down. In theory, the chlorine will react with the ammonia and anything else in the pile. It won't last long and contribute to the salt content.

Benefits will outweigh any damage in my mind.

Agreed! I would think chlorine in the water would dissipate faster when the water is dispensed in a fine spray. Isn’t that the reason we have aerator screens on indoor faucets? To dissipate the hydrogen sulfide gas dissolved in the well water we have. I’m using a $2 hose end shutoff valve, cracked open to make a fine spray of water.

 

[BReeder!]

Donaghy compost??

Not sure what that means...

 

[JCaseyHammond]

Bought a cement mixer on sale at the local Fleet store.
View attachment 2541695

Added a plastic barrel with 1 x 1/2 inch welded wire to the cement mixer to make a compost sifter.
View attachment 2541696
I can put different sized wire mesh inside the sifting barrel depending on how fine I want to sift the compost. I use a 1/4 inch mesh for potting soil compost, and a 1/2 inch mesh for compost to the garden. The finished compost sifts into the wagon underneath the wire, and the larger, unfinished compost goes into the other wagon.

My chicken run is nothing much to look at, and especially now it is under one foot of snow. Sorry, no videos of my machine in action but you can probably find similar setups on YouTube. That is where I got my idea for this mixer.

I love this! Such an elegant solution to getting a fine textured amendment you could bag and sell, to offset costs.

 

[JCaseyHammond]

I have never heard of Donaghy compost, but will assume it's just unsifted compost at this point.

I have been sifting my compost because I literally throw just about anything organic into my chicken run compost system. That includes bones, fish guts, twigs, etc... and that stuff I would not really want in my raised beds. The bones and branches work themselves down into the finished compost layer, but of course they take a lot longer to decompose.

I live on a lake and will throw the fish remains, after cleaning the fish, into the chicken run. The chickens will eat some of it, and most of the rest just gets covered up and buried into the compost on it's own, where I assume the worms will eat the rest of it. I don't like to leave fish remains on top of the compost for the night because I think it might attract varmints. So I will bury those fish remains into the compost before they start to smell.

Before I had chickens, I would just bury the fish remains in the garden and in a couple of weeks the remains would be magically gone. With chickens, they get first crack at whatever they want to eat.

Same goes for kitchen scraps, which I usually only fed to them in the morning. If anything remains at night when I put the chickens in the coop, I will just throw some compost on the scraps to cover it or bury it in a small hole in the chicken run compost.

Nature is a beautiful elegant system

 

[gtaus]

Loving the compost talk. Makes spring feel closer.

We have had 2 consecutive days above freezing this week! Makes you dream of springtime. Unfortunately, we have a winter weather advisory hitting us this afternoon until sometime tomorrow, bringing in another 4 inches of snow with freezing rain.

I don't sift my compost. Like @BReeder! said he does, I mostly use the compost as mulch. This spring will be my first time of having enough compost to use in potting soil. I'll probably pick out the bigger chunks and break up clods as I find them.

I know there are some people that only use unsifted compost as a top dressing and/or mulch and just let nature work the compost down into the beds. I have raised garden beds and my "soil" is more like potting soil - light and fluffy - more like a flower pot. So, I sift my compost.

Also, I have sub irrigated, elevated/raised on legs, garden beds and the theory behind those "raised planters" is the soil mixture has to be highly wicking. The guy on YouTube warns against using any heavy type soil material in those planters because it reduces the wicking properties. Those raised on leg planters have a mix of 1/3 (sifted) compost, 1/3 coconut coir or peat moss, and 1/3 vermiculite or perlite. That make the "soil" mixture highly wicking and the secret to the success of those planters.

BTW, I made 3 of those raised/elevated planters. They are 2X4 feet and about 18 inches deep. The top of the planter is about waist high (~36 inches), so you don't have to bend over for working in the planter. The bottom of the planter has 4 inch drain pipe laid down which allows the storage of about 18 gallons of water. The water wicks up to the plants and the roots grow down to the water. Depending on our weather and how much rain we get, I usually only fill the planter full of water 2-3 times per summer.

In one planter I only planted beans, and I got more beans out of that 2X4 planter than I got out of my in the soil garden using 3-4X as much space. Also, being elevated, the rabbits cannot get at the beans and eat them - which is my major problem with my garden. Anyway, the older I get, the more I appreciate things like an elevate garden bed that I don't have to constantly bend over and tend.

Can't wait until the compost bins have thawed enough to turn. I have about 3-4 cubic feet of finished compost in one bin. I have a second bin just waiting to be turned, and it'll be done about 6 weeks later.

I also have 3 pallet compost bins. But my strategy is just to fill them and leave them until ready to harvest. No turning of the bins for me. I filled 2 bins last summer/fall, so this year I might make another 3 pallet bin compost setup.

I get so much ready compost from the chicken run, that I have no desire to turn the pallet compost bins to speed up that process. In fact, what I ended up doing last fall was sifting the compost from the chicken run, keeping the sifted compost for the garden, etc... and then taking the unfinished compost and throwing it into the pallet bins instead of back into the chicken run. I though I would be able to clean out the chicken run down to the bare earth and start all over again, but I had so much compost that I only made a small dent in the chicken run compost.

For anyone consider building a cement mixer compost sifter, let me give you some idea of how much finished compost v. unfinished compost I process. If I use the 1/4 inch mesh hardware cloth, I get about 1 part finished compost to 1 part unfinished (too large) compost. It takes me about 20 minutes to fill my 6 cubic foot wagon with finished compost and I have roughly the same amount of unfinished "too large for the screen" compost. If I use the 1/2 inch wire mesh for the sifting, then I get about 2 parts of sifted compost to 1 part of too large compost.

Last fall I sifted over 40 cubic feet of compost out of my chicken run compost. The unsifted portion of that compost filled about two and a half of my pallet compost bins. Until I went through that process, I did not realize just how much 40 cubic feet of compost was. It's a lot, for me, anyway. With the cement mixer compost sifter processing about 6 cubic feet in 20 minutes, it really is a back and labor saver.

Judging by how much compost I got out of my chicken run last year, and how much is left, I estimate I still have another 240 cubic feet of compost sitting in there waiting to be processed. That is way more than I can use. This year I will have to build a larger chicken run or move all that chicken run compost somewhere else to continue aging. I guess that is a good problem to have...

 

[gtaus]

I love this! Such an elegant solution to getting a fine textured amendment you could bag and sell, to offset costs.

I suppose I could bag and sell the compost if so inclined. I am in a position in life that I really don't need the extra money, so I have just been giving away some of the compost to my good neighbors who also garden.

As far as offsetting the costs, like I said, I was paying about $5.00 per 1 cubic foot bag of compost at the local big box stores. Last fall I processed over 40 cubic feet of my chicken run compost in less than 3 hours. 40 cubic feet of store bought compost would cost me about $200.00 which is the cost of my cement mixer compost sifter project. So, that investment only took me 3 hours to pay for itself, and now everything after that is just a bonus in my book.

I know most people have a backyard flock of chickens to get fresh eggs. I went into the backyard flock with the idea that I would be making compost for the garden, and the eggs would be a bonus. Turns out that my egg production has been less than anticipated, but my chicken run compost system is like a "black" gold mine for me.

 

[gtaus]

Nature is a beautiful elegant system

The older I get, the more I try to work with nature instead of against it. Wish I would have had those opinions when I was younger. I remember spending time in Europe when I was in college, and not really understanding the "Green Party" concerns in France and Germany. I mean, at that time, most Americans were really not thinking about the impact of our waste products on the environment. We just threw everything in the local open pit dumps and did not give much thought to it.

Now days, Dear Wife and I reuse, recycle, or reduce most of our waste. I shred most of our paper and light cardboard boxes for composting, most of our kitchen scraps get fed to our chickens, and we reuse plastic containers until they get need to be recycled. Almost all my yard waste gets processed into the chicken run - grass clippings and leaves. Fallen branches get processed by my chipper and then I use the wood chips in the nest boxes or as a carbon source for the composting.

When first married over 30+ years ago, Dear Wife and I would have maybe 3-4 bags of garbage per week. Now we have less than 1 bag of garbage per week that we cannot reuse, repurpose, or recycle in some other way. I think that is progress.