Organic Approaches to Getting Feces Less Messy

[centrarchid]

Egg size continuing to increase. Pullets not laying every single day and one busted an egg that she consumed immediately.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

My poultry feces and lawn clippings are the basis for my composting. Most of my flock is free range but the free rangers do roost in a coop at night. I use the deep litter method and let most of the feces just mix in and compost away. But from time to time I'll remove large piles and either take to a separate compost pile or drop in a drum filled with water that I keep full of feces and wood ash from my fire pit or smoker. I let that stuff ferment or whatever its doing for weeks then use it as a liquid fertilizer on individual established plants.

As far as composting on mass, I use the bottom of my runs to give me an almost infinite supply of rich dirt for starting seedlings (individual breeding groups and my OEGBs get locked in the runs so they provide a lot of feces enriched dirt pretty quick). As where my OEGBs are coup and run bound, I also take out the tray of their coup sometimes and add to garden compost piles. Its filled with weeks worth of roosting poop mixed with their bedding (pine shavings and bahia hay).

I make large compost piles in the corners of fence lines that's stacked fence-high with bahai clippings from when I mow the lawn (my lawn is near 2 acres) and I let that stuff break down, and its these piles that I'll add big piles of roosting feces to every so often.

My guineas roost on the OEGB coop and sometimes I can collect their feces on the tin roof. But its not efficient to do so.

I can't make enough compost this way to fertilize my several acres of blueberries, but its more than enough to meet my gardening needs.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Here's a rinky-dink video I did on how I use my bahia yard clippings for all sorts of stuff on my farm:

 

[centrarchid]

I am looking to up fiber content of feed used for birds where forages do not represent a major component of what is consumed. Flocks owned by most people probably operate under that reality. The nature of the fiber is what can be varied greatly.

We will test the resulting feces types on hemp grown in pots.

 

[centrarchid]

Results clear cut where we are seeing consistent pattern in feces variation as a function of what time of day it is. Very Clear!

 

[centrarchid]

Diel fecal collection trial complete. Included some findings we did not expect, mainly related to moisture content of feces. Cecal poop which we seek to avoid not produced as night which is awesome!

Now we gear up to collect night time feces produced by roosting Speckled Sussex. We need about 50 lbs of dry feces which is going to be a challenge with only 24 pullets. Hemp will be started in small pots before being transferred into pots where plants grow to point of producing seed.

 

[Grendal1963]

Yes, I compost my chicken poop for gardening. I prefer horse manure, though. It seemed to have more nutritional value but on the down side it always made for a weedy garden.

Yes I compost my hens poop I even have fellow gardeners in the area that I live who gladly take a few buckets of it for their compost heaps

 

[centrarchid]

Looks like pullets are starting to get broody inclinations. That will enable detailed tracking of feces output, broody weight change and observations on brood patch feathering.

 

[centrarchid]

A pullet went broody late yesterday. She produced about one 42 g egg per day eating just over 100 g of feed. Weight did drop a little as clutch produced.

 

[centrarchid]

Smack me hard, pullet above not broody even though she is exposing her brood patch. She produced another egg. Her brood patch is easy to feel when she settles on nest. The brood patch closes very quickly when she gets off the nest. A student and I will be trying to photograph the brood patches.


Not a single feather evident in any of the nest so far.