- Dec 3, 2014
- 8
- 1
- 32
I have a horse boarding business and used empty stalls for my chickens. Well if you want to maximize profit you have to utilize all the stalls. So, my Barn Manager being the efficient hardworking individual she is made me an offer I could not refuse, literally!!!! Told me to get the chickens out! so taking her hint I made a homemade portable coop and purchased some portable fencing along with listening to several podcasts and reading several articles on pasture rotation. One of them is called "The Survival Podcast" done by Jack Spirko, who interestingly is converting to all duck eggs instead of chickens. Anyway, everything seems to be working better than I expected! The amount of horses she has boarded is generating approximately 1 cubic yard of loose manure a day. This builds up quick so I have been doing my best to compost it in separate areas. During this process of moving the chickens out and building the coop I heard/read that I can have the chickens spread my composted material back into the horse pastures to fertilize them! Which sounded great. Well I am here to tell you that with approximately 30 chickens 300 feet of portable fencing and homemade chicken coop that I built with its own egg tray (Eggs roll out of the boxes into a separate area) They are completely spreading a cubic yard of compost in about 3 days. So all I have to do is use the tractor to dump the compost where I want to fertilize and allow the chickens to do their work. I have included pics of the coop and what the system looks like. The first pic shows the fresh compost and the second shows how it looks in 3 days and is spread completely flat, the camera doesn't show how perfectly flat they have made the pile. The other two are the portable coop and what the egg tray looks like.
Last edited:
