Using Shredded Paper for Coop Litter - As Good As Wood Chips?

[gtaus]

No the cat litter compost doesn’t go near chickens or vegetables. There is paper based cat litter. I prefer the pine based - it is the same as the pellets people use in horse stables. It breaks down to sawdust.

OK. So, the pine based cat litter will break down to sawdust, but it's still not safe for veggies. Do you just throw everything into household trash? Or do you compost the cat litter and poo for flower gardens?

Not to gross out anybody, but I live in the country, and we have a septic tank that needs to get serviced (emptied out) every few years. I asked the septic guy if any of that people poo gets recycle in any way. He said that they haul it out into the country and spread it out on a pasture. After a few years, it is safe for cattle to eat the grass, and, I guess, after that it could be used for planting food for human consumption. Don't know the exact timelines, but at least they have found a way to use the human waste as a fertilizer that eventually is useful, and safe.

 

[Jeri B]

My drying rack is pretty crude. It's a simple frame that DH covered in window screen. We then discovered the window screen is not fine enough, coffee grounds fell thru. I then layer landscaping fabric over the window screen. There is enough landscaping fabric to fold back over the dreams to make a cover. I then lay a board over the top, so the cover didn't blow up. The cover is needed to keep the grinds from blowing away. After the grounds are dry, I put them into the little compost bin (only used for grounds). I'll occasionally take the bin and empty it onto the poop board.

View attachment 2938109

Have you seen this thread that @humblehillsfarm started a while back?

I add wet coffee grounds to my compost bin together with chicken manure and compostable waste from the kitchen (that’s not suitable chicken snacks). I’m guessing you think coffee grounds need to be dry? Can you help me understand?

 

[gtaus]

I’m guessing you think coffee grounds need to be dry? Can you help me understand?

The way I read into that post is that they were drying the coffee grounds to be used in the chicken coop as part of the dry bedding or litter. If it was just going into the compost bin, then I think wet coffee grounds would be better. I hope @RojoMarz will enlighten us on the specifics on why s/he dries the coffee grounds.

 

[RoyalChick]

OK. So, the pine based cat litter will break down to sawdust, but it's still not safe for veggies. Do you just throw everything into household trash? Or do you compost the cat litter and poo for flower gardens?

Not to gross out anybody, but I live in the country, and we have a septic tank that needs to get serviced (emptied out) every few years. I asked the septic guy if any of that people poo gets recycle in any way. He said that they haul it out into the country and spread it out on a pasture. After a few years, it is safe for cattle to eat the grass, and, I guess, after that it could be used for planting food for human consumption. Don't know the exact timelines, but at least they have found a way to use the human waste as a fertilizer that eventually is useful, and safe.

I compost it and don’t use that compost on the veggies.
Well, to be honest I have a rotational system so really I just avoid the veggies that year.
I think I am overly cautious TBH.

 

[RojoMarz]

I add wet coffee grounds to my compost bin together with chicken manure and compostable waste from the kitchen (that’s not suitable chicken snacks). I’m guessing you think coffee grounds need to be dry? Can you help me understand?

My dried grounds are used on the poop board tray. I started out with a bag of PDZ dumped on the tray. When the coffee is dry, I put it into the little metal compost bin. When that is full, I dump it onto the poop board tray.

 

[catballou]

I'm thinking matted stinky mess of paper.

Me too! Big time!

 

[catballou]

I've been shredding mostly cardboard boxes (brown corrugated Amazon/Chewy/etc. boxes) and some newspaper and cereal-box type cardboard for the last year or so, and plan to use it in the coop when the chickens move into their winter coop, probably in a few weeks.

I have a stall bedded in the paper - horses or llamas aren't regularly kept in the stall but are put in for a few hours or overnight on occasion. So far it seems to be serving the purpose.

I use a 16-sheet shredder that I got from Costco and rip the boxes into strips that will fit into the shredder. If a box has a glossy layer I'll throw it on the shower floor so they get wet through and then separate the layers, hang them over the curtain rod to dry, then shred the brown layers and recycle or burn the glossy layer. Mostly that's because the glossy paper doesn't break down as fast, and the colored bits look bad wherever I spread the manure. (White paper also stands out.) But also, some glossy layers actually have a very thin layer of plastic on top, which I discover when they get wet.

I'm hoping the paper works for the chickens, and I'll have a lot more to report in a few months!

That's an awful lot of work for a not very good bedding source. Wet paper molds, drinks to be high heaven and mats together, making it a wet smelly mess.
I tried it once.
Went back to pine shavings.

 

[avjudge]

That's an awful lot of work for a not very good bedding source. Wet paper molds, drinks to be high heaven and mats together, making it a wet smelly mess.
I tried it once.
Went back to pine shavings.

I haven't had any problem with mold or stink or matting. But then, I don't get any water in the bedding. And the chickens are constantly digging in it, mixing it up. And now that I have a system I don't feel that I'm putting any real time into the prep for the cardboard.

I've had the cardboard in a stall since late summer, and the coop since the chickens moved inside about a month ago. The stall is used occasionally to house 2 llamas overnight (when they'll be wanted for something in the morning) and for a horse every so often from a few minutes to a few hours at a time. And now that we have snow the stall is the daytime run for the chickens because I never got an outdoor covered run built.

In an normal winter I'd have to say I can't tell about stink because we'd be in the deep freeze by now, but winter just can't seem to settle in to stay this year and we just had a string of above-freezing days and the barn smells fine. (The coop is inside the barn.)

We used pine pellets the last two winters when the llamas spent their nights in the stall (and days outside with the horses; this year they have their own area so they're outside 24/7). That was dusty. And the barn smelled of llama. Not that it wouldn't smell with paper if the llamas were in, but the pine didn't prevent that. At least so far, in my situation, I'm really not seeing any downside to the cardboard compared to what I've used before.

EDIT: thought of 3 points to add overnight:
- I would definitely agree with @catballou in a place that gets wet. My pigeon aviary gets wind-blown rain and snow through the hardware-cloth sides, plus they take water baths in a shallow tray (and splash it everywere), so pine pellets work there. My husband also puts down pellets (due to their greater absorbency) in the "litter box" corner of the stall when the llamas will be in, as they always go (pee and poop) in the same place. When cleaning up after a horse that has peed, all the wet bedding (of whatever sort) gets shoveled out, and I don't see much difference between sawdust or shavings and paper/cardboard shreds.

- In my previous horse-keeping life (teen in '70s), before the current market for wood waste products, we (i.e. my mom!) could get truckloads of coarse sawdust super cheap and I got used to deep bedding. Now that I have horses again, I was skimping the last few years when we bought bedding by the bag from Tractor Supply. I'm so thrilled that I've found a free source of acceptable bedding so I can put in a good depth of bedding (at this point probably about 4") and I'm sure my horse appreciated it 2 months ago when she spent several days inside with what turned out to be a brewing abscess.

- Cardboard put through a microshredder (which makes very small kind of kinked shreds) has more texture than paper from a standard crosscut shredder, plus brown paper is more absorbent than white printer paper, so the source material may affect our relative experiences.

 

[catballou]

I haven't had any problem with mold or stink or matting. But then, I don't get any water in the bedding. And the chickens are constantly digging in it, mixing it up. And now that I have a system I don't feel that I'm putting any real time into the prep for the cardboard.

I've had the cardboard in a stall since late summer, and the coop since the chickens moved inside about a month ago. The stall is used occasionally to house 2 llamas overnight (when they'll be wanted for something in the morning) and for a horse every so often from a few minutes to a few hours at a time. And now that we have snow the stall is the daytime run for the chickens because I never got an outdoor covered run built.

In an normal winter I'd have to say I can't tell about stink because we'd be in the deep freeze by now, but winter just can't seem to settle in to stay this year and we just had a string of above-freezing days and the barn smells fine. (The coop is inside the barn.)

We used pine pellets the last two winters when the llamas spent their nights in the stall (and days outside with the horses; this year they have their own area so they're outside 24/7). That was dusty. And the barn smelled of llama. Not that it wouldn't smell with paper if the llamas were in, but the pine didn't prevent that. At least so far, in my situation, I'm really not seeing any downside to the cardboard compared to what I've used before.

EDIT: thought of 3 points to add overnight:
- I would definitely agree with @catballou in a place that gets wet. My pigeon aviary gets wind-blown rain and snow through the hardware-cloth sides, plus they take water baths in a shallow tray (and splash it everywere), so pine pellets work there. My husband also puts down pellets (due to their greater absorbency) in the "litter box" corner of the stall when the llamas will be in, as they always go (pee and poop) in the same place. When cleaning up after a horse that has peed, all the wet bedding (of whatever sort) gets shoveled out, and I don't see much difference between sawdust or shavings and paper/cardboard shreds.

- In my previous horse-keeping life (teen in '70s), before the current market for wood waste products, we (i.e. my mom!) could get truckloads of coarse sawdust super cheap and I got used to deep bedding. Now that I have horses again, I was skimping the last few years when we bought bedding by the bag from Tractor Supply. I'm so thrilled that I've found a free source of acceptable bedding so I can put in a good depth of bedding (at this point probably about 4") and I'm sure my horse appreciated it 2 months ago when she spent several days inside with what turned out to be a brewing abscess.

- Cardboard put through a microshredder (which makes very small kind of kinked shreds) has more texture than paper from a standard crosscut shredder, plus brown paper is more absorbent than white printer paper, so the source material may affect our relative experiences.

Glad to hear it's working out for you.
My paper shredded bedding also blew all over from my manure pile.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Very late to this thread, but enjoyed reading the last 17 pages!

A few thoughts:

• I have a paper shredder next to my desk in my home office, and a lawn and leaf bag next to the shredder.
  
  
• I use shredded paper in my chicken compost system. I don't put it direct on the ground, but put it in the different compost setups I have within the run.
  
  
• Recycling in many areas has been done a disservice by "single stream" systems. An awful lot of paper gets contaminated from sitting in bins and trucks with the other recyclables. Better to compost what you can!
  
  
• The "ink in paper is bad for composting" is one of those "oft repeated, never cited" things. Has anyone every seen any evidence that it's true?