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?
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.
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.
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.
