Husband thinks it's ok to compost IN the chicken run. I disagree, who is right?

[5Australorpasaures]

Husband and wife disagree? I'll stay out of the middle of this one.

 

[WildNectarine]

Meanwhile, I’m here changing the paper liner for my pet quail every day all worried about germs…

 

[Sally PB]

Someone here on BYC has turned his chicken run into a composting chicken run. It has worked well for him for several years, and he gets hundreds of dollars worth of compost every spring for his planters and gardens.

I do both chicken run composting and compost bin composting. The bin is for the kitchen scrap bucket* and the chicken poop I clean off the poop boards every day. The run is for the shavings I clean out of the coop once a year, lots of leaves in the fall, buckets of weeds from the garden, and certain kitchen scraps that I'll have in abundance at times or donations from a neighbor. It has never been a problem. The chickens love all the things I bring, peck and scratch them into the dirt. I need to dig out a load of compost, as it's so high, my head is about to brush one of the metal cross poles in the roof.

*I would have two kitchen scrap/compost buckets, one for chicken-ok stuff, and one for not-ok stuff, but we have too many things on the counter as it is.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I do deep-litter in my run, average 6" or so deep, and occasionally toss scraps, especially weeds, in there directly. The chickens scratch it around and mix it into the deep litter (pine straw, hardwood mulch, bark nuggets, dead leaves, grass clippings, and bugs, worms, and chicken doots - lots of chicken doots), so in fact, it is composting.

If it gets smelly, there's either too much green (scraps, doots) or needs better mixing into the brown (the litter described above.) Throw some dried mealworms or something in there, and while they frantically scratch for the snack, they'll turn the litter for you. If that doesn't work, take out the excess and put it in your compost pile, where you will do the same work turning it as the chickens would do.

I like to create natural conditions as much as possible for our chickens, and making the "floor" of the run as similar as possible to a forest floor is a big part of that.