How to determine quality of different types of compost?

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

There are a few YouTube videos of people (Karl Hammer?) feeding only restaurant waste food to their chickens. Since they get so much waste food, they don't bother to worry about the small amount of food that might not be good for the chickens to eat. Evidently, their theory is that if there is enough food to chose from, the chickens will naturally stay away from the food waste that is not good for them. In that case, those food waste products not eaten get composted, eaten by worms, and then the chickens can eat the worms.

Yes, the abundance is a key. If they have lots of choices, they do a good job of picking and choosing what they want/need and avoiding what they shouldn't eat. If all they have are bad options, they will potentially eat them.

I'm looking forward to getting back to food pickups...and I think the flock is too...they love it!

 

[gtaus]

UPDATE 10/06/2020: I shoveled out 6 muck buckets of compost from the chicken run yesterday and ran it through my cement mixer/compost sifter using 1/4 inch hardware cloth. I got just over 6 cu ft of sifted compost and the about the same of excess material that was too large for the 1/4 inch hardware cloth. I threw the excess large material into my compost bin for additional composting. The sifted compost was a rich black strong earthy smelling compost which I hauled out to the garden. I will be top dressing my raised beds with a couple of inches of this compost and just let it sit over winter. Anxious to see how well the plants do in the garden next year with the chicken run compost.

My cement mixer/compost sifter sifted the compost almost as fast as I could shovel it into the barrel. After about 30 minutes, I had 6 cu ft of sifted compost with very little effort. My good old manual 2X4 frame compost sifter would have taken me hours to sift the same amount of material, and that would have been a lot of hard work for me. I just hit 60, so I'm in the stage of life where the investment in the cement mixer/compost sifter made sense for me. I get to make more compost than ever before, at less effort, and have more time to enjoy other things in life.

The only "negative" aspect of this project is that I only shoveled out about one 3X3 section of the chicken run and got 6 cu ft of compost. I have about a 12X12 chicken run, so, in effect, I only harvested about 1/16 of the compost in the run. I really don't need all that compost as it probably represents another 15 X 6 cu ft = 90 cu ft (bags) of compost sitting in the run waiting to be harvested. Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Well, I'll fill up my raised beds and then maybe give my good neighbor a garden cart full of compost for their raised beds. I'm sure they will appreciate it.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

The only "negative" aspect of this project is that I only shoveled out about one 3X3 section of the chicken run and got 6 cu ft of compost. I have about a 12X12 chicken run, so, in effect, I only harvested about 1/16 of the compost in the run. I really don't need all that compost as it probably represents another 15 X 6 cu ft = 90 cu ft (bags) of compost sitting in the run waiting to be harvested. Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Well, I'll fill up my raised beds and then maybe give my good neighbor a garden cart full of compost for their raised beds. I'm sure they will appreciate it.

Sounds like a great setup with the sifter and great compost you're getting out of the run!

On the excess...you can share with neighbors or friends, and don't discount what raking in a thin layer of compost will do for your lawn.

Compost will add to the water-holding capacity of your lawn, helping you avoid watering during dry spells. Not to mention that you'll be sequestering carbon in your dirt...all very good stuff!

 

[aart]

Here is the sifter in action.

I've always wanted to build one of these!!

However, instead of drilling holes on the side of the cement mixer drum to mount a buckle, I used eye bolts where the two halves of the drums come together instead.

Brilliant!

What size mixer?
What size barrel?
What size inner mesh?

 

[Sally PB]

Too much compost...

That's like "too much chocolate."

 

[gtaus]

On the excess...you can share with neighbors or friends, and don't discount what raking in a thin layer of compost will do for your lawn.

Yes, after I fill my raised beds, I'll give some compost to my neighbor who has raised beds, and I went around the yard today looking for low spots to level out with some good compost. So I was thinking along the same lines as you.

 

[gtaus]

Brilliant!

What size mixer?
What size barrel?
What size inner mesh?

I am rather proud of coming up with the idea to use eye bolts on the mixer barrel instead of drilling holes into the side of the mixer barrel to mount D rings. The eye bolts accomplish the same thing - which is to attach a sifting barrel to the cement mixer. With the eye bolts, I can remove them anytime and restore the cement mixer to the original condition if needed.

My cement mixer capacity is 4 cubic feet, which I believe is the standard size home cement mixer. You can buy smaller cement mixers for home use and I expect they would do just as well for sifting compost. I would have been happy with any old used cement mixer but could not find one for sale where I live. So, I had to buy a new mixer.

My shifting barrel was a 55 gallon food grade plastic barrel. I had previously cut the barrel in half to make 2 planting barrels for the yard. However, Dear Wife preferred wooden half barrels so I had the plastic barrel halves sitting behind the garage. I took one of those half plastic barrels and cut it in half again, using the bottom of the plastic barrel, then I attached about 2 feet of 1 X 1/2 inch wire, then the top strip of the plastic barrel. I overlapped the wire in the plastic barrel about 3 inches for support. So, the amount of exposed wire for sifting is about 18 inches long. FYI, the barrel is about 2 feet in diameter which makes about 6 feet round circumference for the wire sifting. That is why the sifting goes so fast.

I wanted to sift my compost finer than a 1 X 1/2 inch mesh, so I have made both a 1/2 inch mesh insert and a 1/4 inch mesh insert. I have been using the 1/4 inch mesh insert and the compost is extremely fine and light after sifting. You could use it for potting plants. The inserts can easily be swapped out for a different sized wire mesh. I use cheap plastic zip ties on the wire mesh to hold it in place, so it takes very little time to cut the plastic ties and swap out an insert.

I used to spend hours every year manually sifting compost on my good old 2X4 wooden frame compost sieve to get very little compost. Now, I can sift a garden cart full of compost in about 20 minutes - which would have taken about 3 hours to do by hand. We pay about $5.00 per bag of compost where I live, so within the first few uses of this cement mixer/compost sifter, I figure this project has already paid for itself.

Plus, my wood chip compost or the chicken run compost is just so much better than the big store compost. The big store compost bags would have to be sifted anyway to remove the "garbage" that always seemed to be hidden in the bagged compost (plastics, rocks, metal scraps, etc...). So I am very happy with my investment in the cement mixer/compost sifter project.

 

[drinkoj]

Following this, as it sounds like a great setup.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Today I made my first food waste pickup in about 8 weeks. Small pickup, probably 3-4 5-gallon buckets total once I get it all unpackaged.

I picked up at lunchtime, and processed one bucket of waste before going back to work for the afternoon...the flock was SO happy with the bucketful of overripe bananas, lettuce, shredded cabbage, mushrooms, and a few other odds and ends.

The food waste was so good and the flock so happy to have it that I don't think a lot of it will become compost...at least not before passing through a chicken...but I think a lot of it will become eggs!

 

[gtaus]

Today I made my first food waste pickup in about 8 weeks. Small pickup, probably 3-4 5-gallon buckets total once I get it all unpackaged.

I picked up at lunchtime, and processed one bucket of waste before going back to work for the afternoon...the flock was SO happy with the bucketful of overripe bananas, lettuce, shredded cabbage, mushrooms, and a few other odds and ends.

The food waste was so good and the flock so happy to have it that I don't think a lot of it will become compost...at least not before passing through a chicken...but I think a lot of it will become eggs!

That's just great. If I lived closer to town, and/or had more chickens to feed, I would probably look into getting waste food too. But I only have 10 chickens and going into town and back with the pickup costs me about $4.00 per trip. I currently spend less than $10 on commercial feed per month, so running the pickup into town to get "free" waste food would not make sense for me. We feed kitchen scraps to our chickens and they love it. So I do what I can with what makes dollar sense in our situation. Dear wife and I like the idea that the chickens eat our kitchen scraps, making it into eggs and compost, and it also saves us garbage bags heading to the landfill.