Poll: Where do you keep your compost pile?

[Willow's Meadow]

Do you keep it in the coop, the run or outside somewhere else? I don't have chickens yet, I do have a compost pile that is in my garden. but it is all just fruit/veggie scraps, grass clippings, dirt etc. But the garden is kind of far from the coop. I am planning to compost their manure and wood shavings. Can I just keep a pile in the coop? What do you do?

 

[Buff Hooligans]

Willow's Meadow :

Can I just keep a pile in the coop? What do you do?

For poo, I collect a few days' worth in a small bucket, then dump it into my composter bins which are a ways away from the coop.​

 

[TurkeyMountainChickens]

If you keep it in the coop: 1. it might add to the smell when fresh, and 2. the chickens will "turn" it for you.

I use the deep litter method, and only clean out the coop once in a while. The chickens free range all day, so its only night droppings. In the fall/winter, I tote it all over to the garden and let it rot there until spring. In the spring, summer, I add it right to the vegetable matter in my compost bin. It's all going into the same garden!

 

[cybercat]

We free range and I had a compost pile before the chickens. Now it is thier pile as it had alot of saw dust in it. I let the chickens do all the composting now. All eatables get thrown out to them. Their coop bedding goes right on the garden from fall till end of winter. Chickens do a much better time on comosting than pile did and their spread it all over the yard in droppings. Rain takes care of those for us.

 

[possumqueen]

Ha! My FAVORITE SUBJECT!! The best excuse there is to keep chickens. (Eggs, meat, pets are all reasons. Compost makes an excuse.)

Due to circumstances beyond my control I am a year behind in getting my chickens, even though my "subtitle" says I'm overrun with chickens.

But when I HAD them, and when I get them AGAIN, I plan to let them turn the compost pile. My pen is already finished, and it's made so that I can move it and set it around a compost pile for the chickens to turn. They take down the pile, pick through it for bugs and seeds, poop in it, mix it all up. Then I move them and their pen to the next pile, restack the first pile, and with its newly added chicken poop it heats up and cooks again.

Chicken poop is the best thing there is to make a really hot compost pile that kills weed seeds and fungus diseases. That's why you can't put fresh chicken manure directly on your growing garden; the heat kills plants.

 

[MareeZoCool]

My compost pile is on the opposite side of my house, far from the coop & the chicken's sight. BUT that is one of their favorite scratching grounds!

I'd start another one, but they'd find that too!

 

[kipoley]

I keep mine about 20 feet beyond the coop and veggies. I add a friend's droppings too. She bags them and they go in the back of my pick up. I also add the bagged leaves from the city.
I've never understood why people pay for paper bags so the city could collect them and sell them back in plastic. Even when I lived there I composted them.
You can never have to much compost if you garden.
~Kimberly

 

[acid_chipmunk]

My compost pile is out behind our house next to the burn pit and goat pen. The chickens are kept out front. I'm sure if they roamed enough they would find it eventually, but they haven't made it that far yet. We mainly compost our chicken poo in our 7 gardens to make the soil better.

 

[laughaha]

Behind the rabbits works really well. The chickens know where it is and turn that pile regularly when they get the opportunity. The chicken coops old bedding goes to the gardens as a mulch- I use hay and the girls are really good about eating most of the seeds. I take all hay out of my coop about every two weeks or so in the summer so it's alot of hay, not alot of poo, and not many seeds. Works phenomenally well. I was throwing the rabbits old bedding in the chicken coop for them to eat the weed seeds but they seem to really love eating rabbit poop and I want that for the gardens.

 

[RedfogsFlock]

Our compost pile is at the furthest far corner of the garden off to the side. I have it fenced off with flimsy 3 ft chain link fence. I have 4 rebar poles in the corners holding it down. Then when we get home I just unlatch a corner and let the girls in. At night we close it up so our dogs don't go eating compos buffet!!! lol