Composting chicken run

[vpatt]

Thanks for the advice!!

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Another tip is to chop up the meat, fish, etc as much as possible before adding it to the pile. Fish can even be blended.

If your goal was to make me picture the old "Bass-o-Matic" Saturday Night Live skit, then you have been successful.

In all seriousness, I think the idea of turning before adding and adding to the center of the pile is all good...I'll "pile on" and say that it's probably a good time to add additional carbon as well.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Was a busy day for the pile on Monday. In addition to 10 5-gallon buckets of mixed food waste, plus a few bags, I picked up about 7-8 bushels of stale sweet corn from the food pantry around lunchtime. The sweet corn is a bit of extra effort as it needs to be shucked, but the chickens love the corn and the husks and cobs make good inputs of slow-to-break-down carbon.

Then that evening, my son's cub scout pack did our annual cleanup of a historic cemetery that is along our town's Memorial Day parade route. That involved cutting some woody underbrush, mowing, and cleaning up two years worth of leaves.

I ended up bringing home around 30 lawn and leaf bags full of shredded leaves mixed with bits an pieces of grass, weeds, woody debris, etc. This will be an awesome addition to the pile, just in time for the weather really starting to warm up.

 

[vpatt]

I've been slacking off on the compost making.....But we have increased the size of one run and made a smaller run for Daphne and her chicks.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

I've been slacking off on the compost making.....But we have increased the size of one run and made a smaller run for Daphne and her chicks.

I’m way behind on plenty of projects...fencing, some grass planting, etc.

I did grab another truck load of leaf bags, since I was dropping off eggs at the church food pantry across the street from the cemetery cleanup site. Think the bag total is at 38 now.

 

[BReeder!]

Was a busy day for the pile on Monday. In addition to 10 5-gallon buckets of mixed food waste, plus a few bags, I picked up about 7-8 bushels of stale sweet corn from the food pantry around lunchtime. The sweet corn is a bit of extra effort as it needs to be shucked, but the chickens love the corn and the husks and cobs make good inputs of slow-to-break-down carbon.

Then that evening, my son's cub scout pack did our annual cleanup of a historic cemetery that is along our town's Memorial Day parade route. That involved cutting some woody underbrush, mowing, and cleaning up two years worth of leaves.

I ended up bringing home around 30 lawn and leaf bags full of shredded leaves mixed with bits an pieces of grass, weeds, woody debris, etc. This will be an awesome addition to the pile, just in time for the weather really starting to warm up.

I have a small chipper. I would have just feed the stale corn right through it. It would have chopped up the cobs for faster breakdown while also making kernels accessible for the chickens and taken very little effort from the human.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

I have a small chipper. I would have just feed the stale corn right through it. It would have chopped up the cobs for faster breakdown while also making kernels accessible for the chickens and taken very little effort from the human.

Yes, I imagine that’d work fairly well. The whole cobs do take quite a while to break down. We had a little fire in the backyard the other day so the kids could roast hot dogs and marshmallows and I grabbed a few whole, dry cobs from the run every time I went in there to burn.

 

[BReeder!]

Yes, I imagine that’d work fairly well. The whole cobs do take quite a while to break down. We had a little fire in the backyard the other day so the kids could roast hot dogs and marshmallows and I grabbed a few whole, dry cobs from the run every time I went in there to burn.

I did find that the odd cob in my compost pile doesn't look very broken down but does in fact become brittle over a few months of composting. After a while you can just crumble them by hand.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

I did find that the odd cob in my compost pile doesn't look very broken down but does in fact become brittle over a few months of composting. After a while you can just crumble them by hand.

Yes, I’ve noticed the brittleness, so I’m not too worried about the cobs. They’ll rot eventually!

BTW…the time between “cob full of corn” to “dry, bare cob” is mere days…these chickens work FAST!