Duck poop!

[billw]

No matter what you do, you will eventually have finished compost. Too much manure and the pile will get smelly and the process will slow down. Too much dry plant matter and the pile will smell fine, but the process will be even slower. The science of composting is finding exactly the right balance to produce finished compost in the minimum amount of time and to get things hot enough to kill weed seeds. But, if you have more important things to do than compost experiments, just put in roughly equal portions and you will get finished compost in 6 months to a year. It might have some viable weed seeds in it if you're too far off the mix, but that's not the end of the world.

 

[rubberduckies]

Thanks. Have you ever heard of 18 day compost? Here's a link
http://peterdilley.tumblr.com/post/690110601/18-day-compost
It's seems simple. 1:3 poop to bedding. But 18 days seems REALLY fast. I'd love to have compost for this year's vegetables (but if I have to wait 6+ months it's not a big deal). Thanks for all the advice. I'm going to try it and see what happens. I have to clean their house anyway so why not throw it all together and let it do its thing. Oh! One more thing... If I have my compost in a bin by the duck house with drainage and air holes (not on the ground) is that ok? And what about adding red worms? Should I try that or just not bother?

 

[LaynaDon95]

Composting can be as easy or as complicated as you want to make it. We built several bins out of wooden pallets over a year ago and started filling them with oak leaves from the yard (I don't recommend that. Oak leaves take FOREVER to break down. We didn't know that at the time.) grass clipping, veggie scraps, egg shells, etc. Extra water, tea, and coffee that doesn't get drunk (drink/drank/drunk, whatever) get put into the compost. The chickens are a huge help because they get in there and scratch around and turn the compost for us. We even put a little bit of animal protein in our bins. The blood after chicken butchering, feathers, even the occasion dead chick as morbid as that sounds adds great bone and blood nutrients to the compost. (We only put those things in the bins the chickens can't get into. We don't want them eating dead chicks. Plus we bury them pretty deep down so if a chicken does get into it, he can't get deep enough to get to the chick.) So there ya go. That'd how we compost. When my duckies move outside we will use their pond water to water our garden with at least sometimes.