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

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

The hardest part of having a chicken compost system might be keeping enough browns/carbon on hand.

A couple more photos...one of the run compost (in the fall, this was all a LOT of leaves) and then adding an influx of carbon around Memorial Day. A few weeks later, you can barely tell I added that much material.

 

[JennJenn86]

Well you both could be right, so how about letting him put all the scraps in there then introduce some browns and turn it? Work together to make it work.

In regards to disease, it would take a fair amount of unkept scraps along with general uncleanliness to cause any issues with the chickens. As long as you're practicing good biosecurity, it's unlikely your chicks will get sick from an abundance of natural vegetative scraps. Hens are natural composter aids, as is, and maybe mine have always been picky but they don't tend to eat subpar materials.

I've never thought twice about putting whatever we have in our run - grass clippings (and we have acres of it), non-meat or fat kitchen scraps, any and all garden discards and prunings, etc etc etc. A lot depends on your run build and number of hens, but even with a run under a roof, I've never had a single issue with breakdown.

Thank you!