Composting chicken run

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Compost King said:
I have about 20 different runs that are used for composting. Just keep dumping in the high carbon compostable materials and let the chickens scratch it up and drop nitrogen in it. Once a year I clean them out and make one giant pile that sits for 6 months before i put it to use in my Nursery. Sometimes I end up with a foot deep of of compacted poo, leaves, straw, grass clippings, wood chunks/chips/Cardboard and any other stuff I have thrown in. I suggest making one big pile away from the chickens for 6 months before you use it.
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@Compost King, I suppose your online name says it all, so I want to ask about using cardboard in the chicken run. Do you rip or shred the cardboard or just throw it in the chicken run pretty much as is? I hear that cardboard actually breaks down pretty fast when wet, so maybe it's not worth the effort to shred it first. If you do shred cardboard, do you have a machine that does it for you? I have a paper shredder, but it would choke on cardboard.

I am all into reducing the amount of material we send to the landfill, but I have not considered cardboard in the chicken run. If I can make that work, it would reduce the amount of material we cart off to the recycle bins. Thanks.
 
Compost might fit me but King... is an exaggeration, I am enthusiastic about composting but far from an expert. But I just took the first word that came to my mind after I came up with compost.

I just throw cardboard in a run and it seems to get shredded by chickens eventually, or it gets buried by chickens and bugs/worms tend to colonize it. Its probably better to shred it but I am lazy. Most cardboard in my runs has really just fallen off of a coop after it was stapled on just before a deep freeze usually over spots where I have many gaps (bamboo poll walls or hardware cloth) it gets wet through winter and falls off by spring and I tend to leave it to the chickens to take care of other than possibly move it away from covering up something chickens need to access.
 
ChickNanny13 said:
There's a thread on DLM = deep litter method ... It's simple and easy, no smell ;)
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However, there is no consensus on the terminology on these methods. Deep litter method means different things to different authors, depending on the book you buy or the article you read.

Some people consider the deep litter method to mean a semi-wet, composting bedding. Other people consider deep litter method to mean a dry, thick bedding used in the coop. I am using the dry deep bedding in my coop and attempting to create a semi-wet, composting, deep litter system in my chicken run.
 
2x ... Very true, we all do our own "version" ;)
I do a "semi" DLM ... The Chicken House (8x12x7) is covered, dirt ground with about 4" of pine shavings. I keep adding as it "disappears", pick up the big stuff and the girl shuffle it around. There's a poop board with PDZ lining it and I clean daily.

When it rains, and it does alot of it here, the ground wicks water into the CH. Several times I've shoveled out the soaking shavings onto a tarp in my patio that I dry, adding more shavings. Once the wet stuff dries up, I toss it back in or if it's really nasty I use it in the yard, works good as mulch too.
 

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