Composting in the chicken run?

[Dumb Kluck]

Today the rock crusher dust arrives (sandy grit remnants of crushed rock)! I am really thinking hard about getting my *** in gear before we hit the triple digits this afternoon so I can pull all the straw out of my secure run & replace it with a sandy substrate & DE in the 6x13 secure run my chicks will be exploring soon. The straw will go into the 1000sqft day run and become part of a composting day job for the hens who've been locked out of the broody fort. I have misters in the smaller run to cool the ambient air and moisten the floor some, and a sprinkler hose in the day run to wet the straw & compost. The misters & sprinkler hose can operate together or independently (with a Y at the hose bib) and are on a manual hose end timer I can set for 10 to120 minutes (no batteries needed), enough to cool & moisten, but not enough to saturate or muddy the areas, with time to dry between misting cycles.
Mostly I want the chicks to have an easy to clean & unsullied surface to start out on and the months old straw on dirt has been shat upon repeatedly & that mess being dampened in the heat just doesn't seem like the best environment for fuzzy chicks!
I will never use straw in the secure run again as it would get very nasy very quickly if all the girls were on lock down for any length of time (like when we both have to work). The straw is wonderful in the larger run, my girls will tucker themselves all the way out just scratchin and diggin' until they collapse into their dust bathing holes LOL and a good compost needs an even mix of wet/green & dry/brown vegetative material + moisture & heat to properly decompose... we will start out a little heavy on the dry material and add kitchen scraps & yard waste to the hens own "green" contributions.

 

[Dumb Kluck]

No more composting in the 6x13 secure run... OMG I am beyond pleased with the crusher dust/sandy mix I just replaced the straw with! The girls loved having all that straw mess heaped into the big day run to entertain themselves with and I am very impressed with the clean & tidy look of the sand/crusher dust mix in the 6x13. Just rake & remove any waste each week = happy chicken keeper And it's much easier to monitor feces health/issues when I can see it on the surface of the sand!!! The birds love to dust bathe in the crusher dust & errant food bits are much easier to for the birds to find on a sandy surface than in mounds of loose, smelly straw! The crusher dust also serves as grit to aid digestion. I will never go back to straw or shavings in the run, might even change out the coop fluff for this stuff, leaving only the nest boxes with straw. Oh if I'd known then what I know now...

 

[AshleyRae]

To build a good compost, you need to balance the nitrogen containing compounds (goat poop, goat pee, and hay) with carbon containing compounds, like leaves, wood chips, non-crop plant parts, etc. By itself, hay with animal byproducts will quickly become anaerobic and a slimy, smelly mess.

I have wood chips as bedding for my girls, and I put my vegetable waste in my compost pile as well. I am only worried about if it's unhealthy for the girls to be scratching through the animal waste. I put it all in a pile behind from the goat pen. I just wonder if I should still let the girls back there.

 

[dragonlord483]

To build a good compost, you need to balance the nitrogen containing compounds (goat poop, goat pee, and hay) with carbon containing compounds, like leaves, wood chips, non-crop plant parts, etc. By itself, hay with animal byproducts will quickly become anaerobic and a slimy, smelly mess.

I have wood chips as bedding for my girls, and I put my vegetable waste in my compost pile as well. I am only worried about if it's unhealthy for the girls to be scratching through the animal waste. I put it all in a pile behind from the goat pen. I just wonder if I should still let the girls back there.

Saw a thread on here about a garbage company that uses chickens to break it down and I let mine on pile

 

[Arcadia Chicken]

Lots of great information. Thank you guys.

 

[ChickMagnet64]

I don't composite directly in the run but I do have a pretty serious composting area near it and every morning I take a pitchfork load or two and dump it in the corner of the run. The chickens love it and in a matter of a couple hours there is no sign of it. It's full of bugs and worms and they go at it like a kid to ice cream!

 

[momofthehouse]

Is it ok for me to just throw the chicken poo in her compost area in the run? I don't keep it real wet cause it rains enough. I add grass clippings and rabbit poo with spent straw in there. I also put my weeds and anything from the garden and kitchen that I don't use. Is there anything else I should or shouldn't add?

 

[TracyLovesDucks]

Composting in the run is a cool idea... especially since it would help keep the soil soft and healthy.

But I've always wondered, aren't there concerns about mold since it's a natural part of the decomposition process? What about the chickens' health? Like if you throw a squash in the run, it will mold, and as far as I understand poultry are sensitive to mold (eating and breathing it can make them sick), so how does it all work out?

Thanks for bearing with me

 

[triplepurpose]

Composting in the run is a cool idea... especially since it would help keep the soil soft and healthy.

But I've always wondered, aren't there concerns about mold since it's a natural part of the decomposition process? What about the chickens' health? Like if you throw a squash in the run, it will mold, and as far as I understand poultry are sensitive to mold (eating and breathing it can make them sick), so how does it all work out?

Thanks for bearing with me

First of all, I've heard all the "mold is dangerous" warnings long ago. I've also gone against the dire warnings of my feed merchant and let the chickens eat some feed that was slightly moldy and they seemed fine (and they enjoyed it). (but it did mean he sold one less bag of feed that day). I've given the flock free access to a "compost pile" (actually just a fenced square where we throw everything from wood chips and leaves to weeds and scraps) for a few years now despite living in a wet tropical climate. We empty this yard out from time to time and pile the material up in a heap outside so it heats up and breaks down fully.

Not all molds are necessarily bad, for one thing--we're talking about thousands of different species when we say "mold". We know some are toxic, but others are delicious in blue cheese. And molds are only one part of what's going on in a compost pile--there may be other microlife in there that is beneficial as well. There have been studies done on deep litter and it's tendency to control coccidiosis for example (I can't cite that source offhand though). There's also a big difference between types of compost, processes, and compost materials--some are dominated by bacteria, others more by fungi, but anywhere there is organic material (alive or especially dead) you'll find both in large numbers. I know all this sounds like a non-answer, but my point is that the biology that's going on in that compost run is a lot more complex than anyone currently understands.

So then consider it this way: if chickens were truly so vulnerable to molds in general, their ancestors would not have evolved to spend most of their waking hours scratching through tropical forests amongst (moldy) leaf litter and eating fallen (moldy?) fruit and the insects that feed on all of it (if you've never seen floor of a tropical forest, I have one behind my house and I can assure you there is plenty of mold growing in it, especially after all this rain we've had--and plenty of obnoxious feral chickens too btw).

And a healthy compost pile (diversity, appropriate amounts of nitrogen and carbon, not too wet or too dry) is but a variation on the theme of what happens on a healthy forest floor. So I tend to think of compost heaps in some ways as a chicken's natural habitat.

That's my ten cents worth on this.
Cheers!

 

[TracyLovesDucks]

This is not a non-answer!
Thanks for the reality check and refreshing perspective, Sky, I appreciate it!