What do y'all do with the dirty shavings from your coop?

[LauraG]

How do you folks handle dirty bedding from your coop?

I am getting ready to put my chicks in their coop today for the first time.

I will be using pine shavings but Im wondering what do I do with all of it when I rake it out? Compost?

Thank you & Blessings,
Laura

 

[rodentdrem]

Definately compost! I can't even begin to describe the difference chicken and rabbit manure have made in my garden. Rabbit manure, by the way, can be added directly to the garden, but chicken manure must be composted first. Good luck!

 

[chicnfarmer]

compost.

 

[ScaredOfShadows]

I compost, food scraps that arent healthy for the animals, grass clippings, and any coop shavings/bedding all gets tossed in the compost heap

besides chicken poo makes for good fertilizer and my compost I use in flower beds and my neighbors used some to help amp up one of their garden plots. they have a bunch of wood chips from where they chip the extra of trees when they cut them down and split wood for their stove and so we traded compost for chips

 

[ranchhand]

Another composter here!

 

[RunnerDucks]

I have a big heap of the stuff, decaying away, to later be used in the garden. It's actually mostly rabbit poop and shavings, but there's some duck and quail stuff in there too.
You're supposed to turn it to get oxygen mixed in to keep it decaying properly, but that's backbreaking work when you have so much. I hope mine will still work out without it.

 

[Wifezilla]

Compost and then cover the garden beds in the winter. By spring my beds are ready to go! I also use it in the bottom of raised beds and then put dirt on top.

 

[edselpdx]

Quote:
It'll still turn into compost, just takes longer. Set the chickens after it to turn it, and then rake it back into a pile to speed things along.

 

[rhaj]

I was wondering this too... I was wondering if I should dump them at the town landfill? My fear with dumping in a pile somewhere is that just moving them to a different part of my yard, we wouldn't really be getting rid of the smell, but just moving it...?

 

[ScaredOfShadows]

Yeah I know all about back breaking with a compost pile. Right now since I've moved to where I live now, my compost heap is HUGE cause my nieghbor puts all his stuff in it too now so we can all share it next year, cause he's impressed with how HUGE his veggies are growing. Chicken poo, rabbit poo, 3+ acres of grass clippings 1-2 times a week thrown in, food scraps, yard scraps, and so now its so much the neighbor runs through it on his tractor every week or uses his hand tiller on it to mix it up and rake it back. It seems to be deteriorating very nicely!

I've used a large hay rake and mounted it on the back of a riding mower (alot of rigging and not nice looking btw) and would run over my compost heap before I got the awesome neighbor with the tractor and tiller to do it

Quote:
Mine barely smells really unless your right up on it and this heap when I raked it back up Sunday was about 3' tall and 6' wide. If its turned and letting it get proper oxygenation it doesn't seem to smell too ripe. Letting it just sit and slowly do its thing seems to make it ferment and smell alot worse though.