Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[Molpet]

I think it's important to tell others when our safety gear prevented a potential nasty accident.

I started wearing them for mowing after something flew in my eye and scratched the cornea. 3 eye dr trips and about $400 towards my deductible ..oh and a couple rx

I have a bagger and a compact JD tractor, so it's not like I'm using a push mower in the wind

 

[gtaus]

I started wearing them [safety glasses] for mowing after something flew in my eye and scratched the cornea. 3 eye dr trips and about $400 towards my deductible ..oh and a couple rx

I have a bagger and a compact JD tractor, so it's not like I'm using a push mower in the wind

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. But yeah, I have also started wearing eye protection while mowing, push or riding. Lots of bad stuff can get thrown up into the air.

 

[fuzzi]

Not my project, but I liked it!

 

[gtaus]

Not my project, but I liked it!

Thanks for sharing. Looks like a simple project using mostly full pallets. Some of my favorite pallet projects are those that use full pallets and don't require much time or effort to put together something great.

 

[chickengr]

Thanks for sharing. Looks like a simple project using mostly full pallets. Some of my favorite pallet projects are those that use full pallets and don't require much time or effort to put together something great.

x2

 

[Smokerbill]

I removed all the decomposed deep bedding woodchips from the chickens' day run today and gave them something that they've never seen before... straw. They seem to like it ok.

I put some poor quality pallets together to make a big compost bin next to the garden and put all the old bedding into it. I had some pieces of 1" heavy plastic mesh I used to line the pallets with to help hold the dusty bedding inside.

Its inner dimensions are something like 42x42x60. It's crooked and ugly, but it'll work. I used some 3" screws, wire and a few nails to hold it all together. And I used my narrow crown pneumatic stapler (Harbor Freight tool) to attach the mesh to the inner sides.

I wetted down each wheelbarrow load of the old bedding when it went into the bin to help it get started composting. If the pallets hold together long enough for the bedding to become useable compost I'll be satisfied. I'm guessing it'll take a year or two.

Safetywise I wore an N95 mask while I was moving the dirty litter and spreading the straw. Last thing I wanted was a lungfull of chicken feces dust.

 

[gtaus]

If the pallets hold together long enough for the bedding to become useable compost I'll be satisfied. I'm guessing it'll take a year or two.

That pallet wood compost bin looks perfectly in place! If you get descent rainfall, it will probably compost that stuff in a year. I have a 5 bin pallet wood compost bin system under trees, full shade, and I just fill up the bin(s) in order and let them sit to compost. No turning for me. I only compost extra stuff in those bins and maybe fill up one bin per year. By the time I finish filling up that fifth bin, the first couple of bins are more than done composting.

I had a tree fall down on my pallet wood 5 bin compost system, so I have to get in there, clean it up, and rebuild it this year. I was out there yesterday, and everything has composted down to finished material. So I will load the compost up in my Gorilla wagons and sift it out for use in my raised beds.

I call it Lazy composting because I don't do anything with the bins other than initially filling them.

For active composting, I converted my chicken run into a composting system and there the chickens break down the material really fast. I get finished compost in as little as 2-3 months. The chickens do all the work of turning the material. Very nice.

 

[Smokerbill]

That pallet wood compost bin looks perfectly in place! If you get descent rainfall, it will probably compost that stuff in a year. I have a 5 bin pallet wood compost bin system under trees, full shade, and I just fill up the bin(s) in order and let them sit to compost. No turning for me. I only compost extra stuff in those bins and maybe fill up one bin per year. By the time I finish filling up that fifth bin, the first couple of bins are more than done composting.

I had a tree fall down on my pallet wood 5 bin compost system, so I have to get in there, clean it up, and rebuild it this year. I was out there yesterday, and everything has composted down to finished material. So I will load the compost up in my Gorilla wagons and sift it out for use in my raised beds.

I call it Lazy composting because I don't do anything with the bins other than initially filling them.

For active composting, I converted my chicken run into a composting system and there the chickens break down the material really fast. I get finished compost in as little as 2-3 months. The chickens do all the work of turning the material. Very nice.

Thanks. It goes along with my style, function over form. LOL

The bedding won't compost in my run because it's entirely underneath a metal roof and stays completely dry, except for a foot or two around the open sides where rain can blow in. The nice thing about dry, broken down woodchip bedding is that it soaks up the chicken waste very quickly, and no smell.

After over 2 years of living on the same woodchips I became concerned that all the dustbathing and digging and eating in the feces laden woodchips could have been affecting the health of my chickens. That's the main reason I cleaned it out and replaced it with straw.

If I had fresh arborist woodchips I would have much preferred using them, but I'm out. I did sign up on the chipdrop website and put in a request to have a load dropped at my place. Hopefully they'll surprise me and drop 20 yards of fresh chips for me someday.

When I remove the straw in the future, at least it will be a whole lot lighter.

 

[fuzzi]

Thanks. It goes along with my style, function over form. LOL

The bedding won't compost in my run because it's entirely underneath a metal roof and stays completely dry, except for a foot or two around the open sides where rain can blow in. The nice thing about dry, broken down woodchip bedding is that it soaks up the chicken waste very quickly, and no smell.

After over 2 years of living on the same woodchips I became concerned that all the dustbathing and digging and eating in the feces laden woodchips could have been affecting the health of my chickens. That's the main reason I cleaned it out and replaced it with straw.

If I had fresh arborist woodchips I would have much preferred using them, but I'm out. I did sign up on the chipdrop website and put in a request to have a load dropped at my place. Hopefully they'll surprise me and drop 20 yards of fresh chips for me someday.

When I remove the straw in the future, at least it will be a whole lot lighter.

My flock makes excited noises when they see me coming with fresh straw, woo!

 

[gtaus]

If I had fresh arborist woodchips I would have much preferred using them, but I'm out.

That's too bad. I can get all the woodchips I can use at our local county landfill. The wood chips are free, you just have to load them up yourself. It takes me about 20 minutes to fork in a full load on my 4X8 X 1-foot-deep utility trailer.

Years ago, I signed up for chipdrop, but never got a reply. But then I found I could get free woodchips at the landfill, so I took my name of the chipdrop list.

When I remove the straw in the future, at least it will be a whole lot lighter.

I used wood chips in the coop for the first couple of years. The last ~3 years I have switched to using paper shreds. Paper shreds are almost dust free and much, much lighter than wood chips when you clean them out. I shred almost all our paper products at home and use it as coop litter. I advocate using any free resource as coop litter, but my current favorite is paper shreds.

When I dump the spent paper shreds out into the chicken run, they compost in less than two months. Wood chips, of course, take a lot longer.

I have also used leaves and dried grass clippings as coop litter. If it's free to me, I give it a try.

My flock makes excited noises when they see me coming with fresh straw, woo!

My flock only gets excited to see me if I have a bucket of kitchen scraps in hand. Otherwise, not much reaction out of them. In the fall, when I dump in loads of leaves into the chicken run, they enjoy playing on the piles of fresh leaves. Doesn't take long for them to level out anything I try to pile up in the chicken run.