sand + compost??

[JenO]

A bit of background, right now the run is just dirt with some loose gravel and old wood/bark 'chunks' leftover from when the area was used for wood storage. I just got the chickens in April, and we did have a pretty wet late spring. It didn't get too muddy back there, altho there were some puddles where the roof that covers half the run wasn't guttered. We have since added a gutter, but I'm still a bit worried about keeping it dry this winter. It IS Oregon, after all.

I have a friend who wants chicken poop for her garden and was willing to buy a load (3 cubic yards) of compost for my run and help me spread it, then pull it back out in the spring and replace it (and continue with this set up indefinitely). I told her I was fairly certain we would have poop soup very quickly with compost, how about sand? She's willing to pay for the sand, but wants to put compost on top, understanding that the chickens woulds still mix it in with the sand, etc. She just doesn't want just straight sand in the garden, sandy compost is fine. She actually plans to gather yard waste/fall leaves/etc from friends rather than buy the compost, so I don't think it will be that much and it's possible the girls will actually eat some of it.

The idea would be in the spring we'll pull the top few inches and/or whatever is more soil/mud/compost/poop than sand, and bring in more clean sand as needed. Repeat come fall, 2x yearly, etc.

I am out of a job so I can't really afford the sand on my own. It is a pretty large run (I need to go measure, it's L shaped so it's hard to estimate) and my friend is willing to pay for whatever we need for this project. Thoughts? Warnings? Portents of Doom?? I'm hoping with enough sand in the mix the drainage won't be too much of a problem. Oh, and it's on the highest part of our very slightly sloped lot, and I'd be using some old leftover boards from another project to keep the sand mix from leaking out thru the fencing/hardware cloth. So this would all be added above the current grade.

 

[elmo]

How about this: put the sand in the run, not the compost. Then pick up one of these and duct tape it on a long handle:

http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/group/13167/product.web

You use this to go around the run periodically (I do it daily) to pick up the droppings, leaving the sand behind. You dump the droppings into a conventional composter bin (together with whatever else you have for composting, like shavings from the coop or nestboxes) and collect for your friend.

This is pretty much what I do. The run stays odorless because there is no organic matter in there to hold moisture.

This summer a colony of black soldier flies took up residence in our compost bin and did a wonderful job of moving along the composting process. I now have a bin full of finished compost, plus my chickens got to gorge on the fly grubs. What luck!

 

[JenO]

I'm not thinking that would work, because half the sand will be wet all winter. (we get drizzly rain all winter long here) I may use it under the cover tho, and encourage her to dump the compost on the uncovered side.