Rebuild a yard this way?

[funkyfarmstudio]

I just read this article from the homepage:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/composting-with-chickens

and wondered if you could rebuild a yard that has been taken over by weeds this way? We have a large area that is infested with crabgrass, and for whatever reason can't even get grass seeds to sprout there after aerating. I'm thinking maybe I could fence it in and put the chickens to work over the winter on it - throw in some hay, leaves, etc. and maybe it would better for planting grass in the spring?

What do you think?

 

[mississippifarmboy]

I think it would depend on the size of your yard, the amount of compost you have and how many chickens you have. I might work for rebuilding a yard.

We compost in a big wire bin (about 6' across and 4' high) ourselves, then sieve it through 1/4" hardware cloth then spread the fine compost on the chicken yard in early spring.

Works for us; I couldn't find a picture of just the yard as it was before, but you can see how little grass there was originally in this picture behind the production rooster. We put up a small pen there first and tried to compost on site, but not sure it did a lot of good.




The same yard one year later after putting down about an inch of compost, raking it into the soil and spreading a little grass seed.

 

[Mattemma]

Cool link. I think it is worth a try.

I make piles all over my yard,and let the chickens go at them.If there is a weedy spot I want to take over I just layer the piles deep,and then plant on top.I only restrict the chickens from spots where I have seedlings going in the summer.Rest of the year they are able to roam the yard.

 

[RollinWithTheStones]

Wow nice compost. We made one out of pallets and when the girls free roam they often stop in the compost bin. It helped break it down real quick after I mucked it up by putting too much pine shavings/hay/grass in it.

When we redo the chicken run I plan on putting the compost bin right in their run and just doing a small door to open up and dump the stuff in to it.