Paul Gautschi/Garden of Eden chickens?

[MomMommyMamma]

I recently watched the Back to the Garden of Eden film. Very interesting. One thing that really got my attention was his chickens. From what I can gather, he throws all yard/garden waste in the pen. Also throws wood ash in. Claims there's no smell and the dirt in the pen appeared to be beautiful, light, non-compacted compost that he then uses in his garden. We live in a VERY wet area (West Virginia). It rains every month of the year here. I'm wondering if anyone else uses this method of scraps to chickens equals compost in a wet area?

 

[Beekissed]

I recently watched the Back to the Garden of Eden film. Very interesting. One thing that really got my attention was his chickens. From what I can gather, he throws all yard/garden waste in the pen. Also throws wood ash in. Claims there's no smell and the dirt in the pen appeared to be beautiful, light, non-compacted compost that he then uses in his garden. We live in a VERY wet area (West Virginia). It rains every month of the year here. I'm wondering if anyone else uses this method of scraps to chickens equals compost in a wet area?

Yep...I do that here, though we call it the deep litter method. I'm currently trying Paul's gardening method as well. I don't have my chickens penned but I use the DL in the coop for the same affect and do this year round. No smell, no flies, recycling of various materials and chicken poo into rich, balanced compost.

Being in a wet area actually makes the composting go more quickly and efficiently than areas that are more arid, so you are in the right spot to make it happen.

Vid on the DL method and how mine looks:

I place all the food scraps, garden refuse and weed/flower clean up I can into the coop, along with bags and bags of leaves per year, wood chips, pine needles, smatterings of hay that have been cleaned out of nest boxes and dog houses, etc.

Put in this....







And this....





And take out this....




No smell, just earthy and, if I filter out the larger pieces, it's a fine, silty dust just like Paul's. I finally reached good composting in my coop when I stopped using wood shavings and started using leaves, greens, twigs, bark, pine needles, etc. Basically, a bigger variety of materials and particle sizes and kept away from pine shavings...they compost much more slowly. I also stopped stirring it around or encouraging the chickens to do so...the variety of materials are fine for letting oxygen into the pack and by stirring it around I was losing valuable moisture from my bottom layers.

It was the deep litter method of cooping that let me see the worth of Paul's BTE method of gardening, as I'd already been doing this in the coop and found I could trap moisture there when I wanted and make lovely composted mulch much more quickly than I could if I put all my chicken litter into a pile somewhere.

BTW, nice to meet another hillbilly on BYC!

 

[henless]

I've wanted chickens for a good while, but the smell always kept putting me off. Chicken poop stinks. Chickens poop a lot. A lot of poop = a lot of stink. Then I came across the DLM. So glad I found that post on BYC. I read the whole thing and came to realize that I could possibly have chickens without weekly coop cleaning.

February will be 2 yrs since I got my first chickens. I've been using the DLM since day one and it has been a life saver! My coops never smell (unless there's a fresh poo), no flies and the chickens love to dig through all the litter. I use DL in the run and it keeps it from being a slimy, slippery mess when it rains. I remember as a child how slimy our chicken pen was. After it rained, it would really put out a stink!

My dl in the coop runs on the dry side. I have a lot of ventilation in my coops. I add water in the summer, but not as much in the winter. I'm still learning how to do it properly. Even though mine hasn't be "perfected" yet, I still love how easy & smell free it is.

I cleaned out my coop this spring and put everything in my compost bin. I don't think mine gets enough moisture to put it straight in the raised beds. This spring when I do my clean out, I may put some in the compost and the rest in the runs. I'll have 3 coops to clean, so I don't think it would all fit in the compost.

 

[lazy gardener]

I also clean the litter out of my coop, and toss it into the run. It gets to cook there for quite a while before I feel that there is enough to rob for the garden. But, the girls have a new run, and flock is bigger, so their production should be better. Meat, eggs, poop, weed control, soil cultivation, insect control, companionship and endless entertainment. What more could anyone ask for from a single animal???

 

[lazy gardener]

I can tell you that I try to keep a mulch on my garden year round. My first garden was in a heavy clay area, wet, invaded by tree roots and too shady. One would think the mulch would make it even wetter, but not so. The mulch kept the frost from penetrating so deeply, allowed me to be in that spot planting weeks before my neighbors could get into their gardens. IMO, any time you cover bare soil with either plant material or mulch, you are doing a good thing. I hate to see naked soil! I am impressed with Paul's approach, and am working towards that with my new coop situation. I've built the new coop on newly cleared land, which is heavy clay subsoil (to enable me to use my best soil area for gardening. It will take me several years to turn that clay around the coop into acceptable soil. Tossing the used litter from the coop to the run is a good starting place. No reason not to use your compostable material. I love to add grass clippings, and leaves to the litter. Wood ash in moderation is a good thing also! Give it 2 years, and you'll have some real good stuff going on in your run!

Hats off to you with your home schooling effort! Your children are receiving a wonderful advantage.

 

[SunshineAnShade]

Im so glad i came across this thread! I was reaching the best way to do deep litter method and came across back to Eden. I've only been able to watch half the video so far and plan to finish the rest. However i then started looking up the proper steps for BTE and came across a site that had FAQ for Paul specifically about his chickens.

It asked things from what does he feed them, to what does he feel makes a perfect coop. In the answer it states he uses an old shed and wood chips for bedding. Wood chips for bedding!?!

before i ever researched deep litter method, we were cutting down overgrown forsythia bushes and chipping them and i had it in mind to either compost it or use it for bedding. That is until i read to only use kiln dried shavings for the deep litter because too much moisture could promote mold.

Here is a link to the FAQ page i found: http://www.l2survive.com/garden/back-to-eden-garden/back-to-eden-garden-faq/
The coop question is about halfway down.

I would love to know if any one has tried deep litter method using the Back to Eden method of wood chips (green parts and all)!

 

[aggiemae]

I would love to know if any one has tried deep litter method using the Back to Eden method of wood chips (green parts and all)!

I use sand in the coop but I do this in my chicken yard to keep down the dust and the flies and as long as you keep adding new materials it keeps the chickens occupied too. The shreddings come from our trees and laurel that we have professionally trimmed once a year. The company chips everything right into the chicken yard.

My neighbors that don't use poison or fertilized bring over lots of grass in spring and mowed up leaves in fall. No one here waters their grass so has slowed down some with the hot weather.but right now I have tons of weedy grass in my asparagus bed that I will pull and dump in at some point. I rake out a section mow and then, enough tp fills two 55 gallon tumblers. I add water now and them and tumble daily and in a few weeks into 15-20 (dry) gallons of compost.

 

[SunshineAnShade]

...

I use sand in the coop but I do this in my chicken yard to keep down the dust and the flies and as long as you keep adding new materials it keeps the chickens occupied too. The shreddings come from our trees and laurel that we have professionally trimmed once a year. The company chips everything right into  the chicken yard. 




I definitely plan to do this in their run. Right now i would say half the run is dirty and the other half is grass. I know once the chicks grow, i can say bye bye to the grass unless i put some screen boxes on top of a small section so they only eat the tips. Otherwise i have a 55 gallon container of chipped Forsythia waiting to be composted in the run. I've already started using it in my garden. I have a ton more that needs to be chipped still! Lol

 

[FridayYet]

I definitely do deep litter in the run, and I wish I had started in the garden as well.

Cottonwood leaves, grass clippings, garden scraps, many weeds all go in the run and disappear pretty quickly into the litter. I love it, and so do the chickens. No smell, no flies, no mess.

I live in a dry area and my run is covered for shade (used to be a carport) so I have to water it down frequently in the summer. Gives them cool soil to dig down to and get relief from the heat.

 

[islafarm]

I live in a wet and warm humid area and we use wood chips, shavings and leaves in the run. I compost my food and farm scraps with black soldier fly larvae and then that compost goes into the run too for my girls to dig through, aerate and mix with wood shaving / leaves before I put it in my garden. If there's good ventilation and the material is being moved daily by the chickens, maybe with occasional help from you too, then it should break down relatively quickly. With a large surface area with lots of exposure to the air and to the soil below it breaks down like it would on the forest floor: into a nice soft humus. I'd definitely encourage you