Using Chicken Manure for fertilizer

[lazy gardener]

Time for a bigger garden!!!

 

[Chicken girl 15]

I made my compost boxes out of pallet for the air circulation. It works great. Plus small animals can get in to "turn" it for me.

 

[jruhle]

I get over a ton of compost from my coop, I add seaweed to the pile as well. I sold over 200lbs this spring! Excellent for the garden!

 

[shortgrass]

Chicken poop, I literally just scoop it out into a mountain and start a new compost pile out of it every time I clean, 4 x a year. I use hog panel on 3 sides, start with sticks and leaf mold, and layer the coop clean out with greens and kitchen scraps. Turned by the chickens lol, and I put redworms in them and keep moist. I also like to pile some azomite or greensand in there just for kicks

We compost our sheep poo for crops. It gets hauled out and "cooks" for a year before we spread it on the fields prior to planting... Same concept with the chicken poo but its in the yard,;whats there come spring gets smeared around new plantings as mulch

 

[nchls school]

I use dried chicken droppings often. It works well without the smelly compost pile; a must when you have close neighbors. However, it does need to be dried and used sparingly.

Here are some pictures of our outside doorstep flower garden. Using dried chicken manure.----Hyacinth beans. Flowers in front of the beans.

 

[lazy gardener]

Beautiful.

 

[Mimi Dana]

Hey Tom. I'm guessing you have a fairly small yard? The folks who've replied have some excellent suggestions. I've not used dried chicken manure, or made manure tea out of it, so am intrigued with that idea. With compost, for it to work well, it needs to be at least a cubic yard. You can then just let it age. Build it this year, it should be ready to use a year later. Or if you have time and energy, you can flip your pile. A lot of people build one pile, flip it into an other bin, and start a new pile. You can make a contained pile with pallets, wire, cinder block, or any other materials that would contain about a cubic yard or more. Or you can just pile it up and let it cook. How big is your chicken run? Have they stripped all of the vegetation off it yet? If so, you could let them make compost for you. Simply put the shavings and poo that come out of the coop into the run, toss some scratch on top of it, toss in your weeds, grass clippings (only use clippings from lawns that are herbicide and pesticide free) and they will happily turn and fluff that compost, while turning the bare hard packed soil of the run into a fertile soft soil laden with healthy nutrients and life. My girls have created some awesome compost in their run since spring. Chickens need a job to do. In addition to laying eggs, they were designed to make compost!!!

How do you use the compost the chicken's make? I have heard people move the coop but not sure this is what you are saying. Thanks

 

[lazy gardener]

I never have enough compost. We recently cleared some land, and the excavator totally trashed my property. Turned all of my beautiful top soil and compost under and put heavy clay and rocks on top. I've taken aged bedding out of the coop, and piled it directly in the garden in the fall. During the last year, I just toss the bedding out the clean out door and into the run. It's breaking down some. My goal is to have a deep litter composting right in the coop, but have not yet achieved that. Bee Kissed is the queen of DL coop composting. For it to work effectively, you should have a coop sitting on bare ground... no floor. Unless you have a mobile coop, moving it would be very difficult. I plan to just let the litter build up in my run until it's at least 6" thick. Then, I can start robbing some of it for the garden. Every fall, I let the chickens into the garden when I'm done harvesting. They get at least 2 months to work over the soil, eat the weeds and bugs, before the ground freezes solid. In the spring, I let them back in to work the areas that have not yet been planted. If I had 100 chickens, I'd still not have enough compost!!!

 

[Fowl Wench]

I have been doing this for years but didn't realize I was contributing to my chickens and making compost. But now we have a rat problem.
I started cleaning everything out of the coop and quit putting hay down because I found the rats were pulling it up into the coop walls to make nests!
I started scooping up all the poop daily and putting it into an aluminum can. Now I'm trying to figure out, how do you let the chickens make your compost in the run AND keep the rats away?

 

[lazy gardener]

Are you using a gravity feeder, and keeping it out at night? IMO, that contributes to rat/mouse issues more than what you are using for bedding in run/coop. I feed fermented feed, so there is never any spilled on the ground that can be nibbled by rodents. They get fed in the morning, and perhaps later in the afternoon. If there is any left in the feeder (which is outside) when I lock up at night, I cover it up. I know that lots of folks hesitate to use snap traps or poison for fear of injuring a non target animal. But, if either rat or mouse signs are evident, I'd use both, and declare all out war. Put the traps/poison in a box or otherwise contained so that non target animals can't access.