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MotorcycleChick said:
This conversation reminds me that I have a question. What do you do when you are running out of places to put the dirty bedding? I have reached that place, and I need to figure it out quick.
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I don't know how much bedding you are talking about...................but spring IS coming and maybe you will have more vegetable and flower beds that will need supplementation

moving the older stuff to the garden and the newer stuff in the compost pile?

its hard to imagine all the garden options when we still have snow on the ground....................yet I keep thinking this is just about to change for the better..............

I do agree that giving it away to people you know is also a good choice

I understand that chicken manure is a valuable commodity for gardeners.................
 
MotorcycleChick said:
This conversation reminds me that I have a question. What do you do when you are running out of places to put the dirty bedding? I have reached that place, and I need to figure it out quick.
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I was going to post this question on the Managing Your Flock thread. I haven't gotten there.
I live in the country where everyone is giving away rabbit, chicken and horse poo. I won't be getting rid of it that way. I don't garden either.
We have 2.5ac, but only 1.5 or so is cleared for use and over half of that is out near the road where people can see it. So, I don't have much room to hide my poop. Also, we are cleaning the pens and cages in the shed every 2wks. It takes 15 bales of shaving to refill them, so can you imagine what I am taking out with the poo and wasted feed?
 
dheltzel said:
Fertilizer of any type "burning" plants is often misunderstood. Plants absorb water by osmosis, which requires that the water is the soil around their roots (think tiny film of moisture, just slightly damp to us) have a lower concentration of salts than the fluid inside their cells. Any sort of salt has this effect, and fertilizers of all type counts as salts. If the concentration of these salts is too high, the plants lose water out of their roots rather than absorbing it, hence the "burning" effect.

No manure can ever burn unless it is too concentrated in the area immediately around the roots. And the quick fix for too much fertilizer is to add water, which dilutes the salts and restores the flow of water into the roots. So use the manure carefully, spread it thin and mix it well with the soil.

Composting actually gets rid of the fertilizer chemicals in the manure by 1) offgassing (smell that ammonia? It's drifting off into the air instead of adding N (nitrogen) to your soil 2) leaching (weeds grow great downstream of the manure pile as rain washes the nutrients away) 3) uptake into the bodies of organisms that are rotting the carbon components of the pile, like straw or wood shavings. This last one merely ties up the N and it will be released later when the organisms die, so it's not a real loss, and it creates other good things in the process.

I'm not trying to denigrate composting, it works, but it does not magically make manure non-burning after 6 months. Understanding what's really going on can help you avoid problems, and I think it's fun to know what's happening.
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You Sir (?) are a wealth information! Keep it coming! ::pop :thumbsup
 
Reyvaughn said:
I was going to post this question on the Managing Your Flock thread. I haven't gotten there.
I live in the country where everyone is giving away rabbit, chicken and horse poo. I won't be getting rid of it that way. I don't garden either.
We have 2.5ac, but only 1.5 or so is cleared for use and over half of that is out near the road where people can see it. So, I don't have much room to hide my poop. Also, we are cleaning the pens and cages in the shed every 2wks. It takes 15 bales of shaving to refill them, so can you imagine what I am taking out with the poo and wasted feed?
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Wood shavings really benefit from composting. You could dump them into a shallow pile (windrow) and then add to the top with every cleaning. The microbes will fix the N as they turn the shavings to humus, and the rest will leach slowly out to the surrounding vegetation.

What is the non-cleared acreage? Woods, fields or wetland? Any of those are perfect dumping grounds for your manure. Untilled ground is usually full of roots and they are hungry for the fertilizer. Just don't dump directly into water, too much gets released at once, better to let the rains leach it and the rest will compost nicely.
 
AnneInTheBurbs said:
You Sir (?) are a wealth information! Keep it coming! :
pop.gif
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Thank you! I can't use much of my BS in Horticulture in my day job with computers, so I love to get some use out of it. I still enjoy the science and observation, but the hard work of gardening tempers my enthusiasm now. I'm doing more this year because I have 2 young nieces who are interested. I do the poultry with their older sister, and want something to do with them. And I have to admit I still like it a lot, and now I have ideas to reduce the effort.
 
Reyvaughn said:
Quote: I dont run into alot of people that can help me either when I have questions, to be honest I love the looks of them and they are very intelligent, cant explain it,
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but you can sit with them and KNOW they are thinking alot more than the other birds. I love the eggs, pristine chalk white.

dheltzel said:
Spring is coming!
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I looked at the 10 day forecast. Warmer temps, looks like this weekend will be great.
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But its gonna Rain and I so wanted to work outside on the netting arggggg
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