Harvesting my Chicken Run Compost - Black Gold!

Stuff was getting scratched around, broken up, but not really composting. Then it dawned on me: it is all dry as dust in there, because I put a roof on the run.

Water is needed for composting. If not, you essentially have a dry deep bedding system and very little to no composting goes on. The rule of thumb for any composting pile is that the material should be as moist as a wrung out sponge. Last summer we had a terrible drought so I had to set up my sprinkler to water the chicken run at least once a week. In a normal year with normal rainfall, I would never have to wet down my chicken run.
 
I have the same situation - I put a roof on the run so it is very dry.

I would love to have part of my chicken run covered with a roof strong enough to support our snow loads in the winter. But, only part of the chicken run as I do want to keep my chicken run composting going well. Not having a roof has some advantages, at least for composting.
 
In spots, I have chicken wire a foot or so tall connected to the regular welded wire fence of my run...it helps hold stuff in a bit (and keeps the chickens from reaching through and pecking my plants on the outside of the run).

:thumbsup Good suggestion. I think I might have some old chicken wire for that. Certainly, a lot less expensive than having to buy new hardware cloth.
 
I don't sift I just fill a bucket from the run floor and spread it around where I am growing shrubs.

Well, I sift my compost because I am using it to make a 1:1 chicken run compost and fresh topsoil mix for my raised beds. Nothing wrong with using unsifted compost, especially as top dressing or mulch. I have a large pile of free wood chips that I use for mulch. So I save my compost for making soils.
 
Such wonderful composting! My run compost is still young but I'm also struggling with lack of moisture. Half of the run is roofed so the chickens (and myself) would have a dry area during winter storms, but now I'm wishing for less dry! I will definitely start watering down the run to get it composting, but water is precious gold around here too. Now I'm thinking a rain barrel system would be perfect to save the roof runoff for run irrigation. That darned roof is doing it's job too well, so I'll make it work twofold!
 
Half of the run is roofed so the chickens (and myself) would have a dry area during winter storms, but now I'm wishing for less dry!

Maybe just use the unroofed portion of the chicken run to make your compost?

Although my chicken run is completely unroofed, I only have composting going on in 2 of 3 sections. The past couple of days that I have been harvesting compost from my run, I took out 24 cubic feet of compost in just a 4X4 foot area of one section of my run. I have completely filled and topped off all my raised beds for the year just from that one 4X4 foot section - and my chicken run is 13X39 feet! Of that 13X39 foot run, I have composting going on in 13X20 feet. And, I only needed to harvest a 4X4 foot area for all the compost I can currently use.

I lived out in California back in 1998-1999. It was beautiful. At that time, I don't remember any water shortages where I lived in Santa Barbara. But California is a very big state and I know lots of areas are basically desert. Collecting water in rain barrels sounds like a great idea. Dumping your cleaning water back into the run is a good use of that water - as long as you don't use soaps or chemicals in that water.

One thing comes to mind, however, is that I have heard some places you cannot legally collect rain water for private use. I have a hard time understanding that, but I guess I could see a community wanting the rain water to go back directly into the ground water reserves.

I live on a lake, and I cannot imagine any water shortage in my lifetime. If you don't have adequate water, then I imagine it's as precious as gold.
 
I lived out in California back in 1998-1999. It was beautiful. At that time, I don't remember any water shortages where I lived in Santa Barbara. But California is a very big state and I know lots of areas are basically desert.

I live on a lake, and I cannot imagine any water shortage in my lifetime. If you don't have adequate water, then I imagine it's as precious as gold.
I grew up in CA and water shortages were a thing when I was younger, but seem to have gotten a lot worse in recent years. A lot of my relatives and friends don't have lawns or much landscaping any more, just concrete patios.

I also live on water now - a stream and a pond. The next house/property we get, we will NOT be situating ourselves near water - it's stressful! The yard has flooded twice. The water table is so high I can reach it with a regular shovel (but in good news(?) the lawn stays green year round without watering, even in the heat of summer). Feast or famine!
 
I have done the same but have been too lazy to harvest my finished compost.

Well, the great thing about chicken run compost is that the longer you let it sit, the better it breaks down. It's like money in the bank and ready to take out when you want/need it.

Love the conpost sifter I'm going to have to make one.

I don't think I could do the volume of sifting compost I need without using my cement mixer compost sifter. Well, I suppose I could using the manual 2X4 wood frame with hardware cloth over the wheelbarrow, but it would take a very long time.

:old The older I get, the more valuable my time is to me. For me, spending the money on the compost sifter was worth the cost, plus there is very little labor involved in the automated sifting process (compared to doing it manually), so my old body does not feel all the aches and pains of working out in the hot sun all day.

If anyone is serious about converting a cement mixer into a compost sifter, I still recommend trying to buy a used cement mixer in good working condition. I spent almost a year looking for a used mixer where I live before I gave up and bought a brand new mixer for my project. But that cost of the cement mixer is by far the most expensive item on that project list.

Even buying a new cement mixer, my total costs on the cement mixer compost sifter project was about $240 at the time of the build. Since I was paying $5 per bag for compost at the big box stores, and I could sift 3 bags of chicken run compost every 15 minutes, it only took me 4 hours of run time to break even on my costs of this project (12 bags of sifted compost every hour = $60 per hour savings of not buying compost at the store).

I think I paid about $200 for the cement mixer, so if you can find a good working mixer for maybe $50, you could really save some money.

⚠️⚠️ Warning. Since I put my compost sifter into action, I have almost doubled my raised beds and gardening space. It's so easy for me to make chicken run compost, and then sift it out for use, that I started building even more raised beds. So, what I save on time and labor on sifting the compost, I probably make up in how much time and labor I spend on my much larger gardens.
 

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