What do I do with all the chicken poo?

[The Kibble Goddess]

I've bedded my coop with sand. Once a week I scoop with a cat litter scoop and toss the poos in the compost. Never get any smells or flies in the compost, but would cover with dry shredded office or news paper about 3" fluffed if a problem started. W/ only 4 hens there's not much poo.

 

[Our Roost]

Once a year!!!! Whats your secret pray tell? Deep litter bedding you say. I use layered straw and change it about every 3 weeks. The coop smell and odor almost dictates when it is time to change it. I have 23 birds At 4 months old. Lots of poo! I'm all ears!

 

[tball]

I have 2 compost wizards (love them) but they do compost fast, so chicken poop is really to hot, i have a separate hardware cloth circle i zip tied and dump in to , it sit out at the edge of woods and when its full i tip it over and get the tractor then put in garden!

 

[furbabymum]

See that barn WAY back there. That's where the chickens are. Awesomeness at being too far away to smell.

 

[Mrs. Fluffy Puffy]

I have a compost pile going behind my breeding pens. I throw all my poo, hay, etc in the pile. The chickens go scratch through it when they are loose, then I have to rack in back up in a pile again. When we need it for the garden, it's there so it works.

You can also sell poo as fertilizer on Craigslist. Alot of people that don't have animals, but have gardens look for that type of thing and are sometimes willing to pay some $ for it.

~ Aspen

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I decided to go with the sand approach in the coop. It has been working out great. I take about 3-5 min each day and sift out just the poo, so easy. I have been bagging and throwing out the poo. Can I put mostly straight poo(since no shavings) in a compost or is it too much with just being the poo?

I use sweet PDZ on the floor of my coop (the powder, not the granules). So, I have pretty much pure poop to dispose of every day after scraping. I tried using the compost bin approach, but since I don't collect grass clippings I couldn't keep up with the need for layers in the compost pile to prevent smells. I really tried, too, collecting weeds by hand and layering them in.

SOOOOO it ended up smelling terrible- just like a big pile of smelly poo!

I ended up switching to 2 approaches:

1. Kitchen waste unsuitable for chicken feed (banana peels etc.) goes to the compost bin which is OUTSIDE the chicken pens. I don't want them getting botulism from eating that nasty old food.

2. Chicken poo - I carry my shovel in one hand and the dustpan in the other every morning, dig a hole in the ground (the garden ground is very soft and this is almost effortless), and cover the waste. The girls race to get the worms I dig up (not a good thing as they carry internal parasites to chickens but you can't win them all, sigh).

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

See that barn WAY back there. That's where the chickens are. Awesomeness at being too far away to smell.

 

[1hotmoma]

Well after reading the posts I think I am going to go with the deep litter method. We are finishing up a new coop and I have been debating which method to use. I don't mind spending time with the chickens but I would rather spend time watching them and not clean after them all the time.

 

[Danester]

I have a neighbor that comes by once a week and scrapes my poop boards for her compost pile....and I deep litter mine as well...we do get some flies, but no smell really, unless she forgets to stop by and the boards get really bad

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I have a neighbor that comes by once a week and scrapes my poop boards for her compost pile....and I deep litter mine as well...we do get some flies, but no smell really, unless she forgets to stop by and the boards get really bad