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

[PunkinPeep]

Quote:
It's probably a bigger issue if your yard is pretty small.

But once your dirty is outside, it acts differently. The ammonia smell can evaporate away, the sun and cook it a little and dry it out and the rain can wash away the poop into the ground.

I don't have the best sense of smell, so keep that in mind. But when i cleaned out my coop after some 8 months of deep litter and 25 plus chickens, i put a lot of the bedding around one of my oak trees as mulch. It doesn't look or smell any different than the rest of the mulch now. It just blends in. Plus, once the bedding is outside, for some reason the chickens love scratching through it, and that helps break it down too.

I also put a large portion of the bedding in my compost pile, but i didn't want that big of a percentage of wood shavings in my compost, so i split it up.

I also have a pretty big yard and no close neighbors, so that may make a difference.

 

[anchasta]

Quote:
Once it starts "composting," like if you add grass clippings to it, the smell quickly fades. Good, effective compost should smell only mildly "sweet" and not stinky at all!

 

[3LittleChickadees]

(We have bantams so there is far less mess than standard size birds.)

We start with fresh shavings in the nest boxes.
Then we toss them on the coop floor where they are stirred into existing shavings and allowed to dry.
Most of them end up falling through the wire bottom to the barn floor.
At this point they are dry and do not smell.

I take them out when they get too high and use them in the compost or to soak up muddy areas in the pathways.
Once outside the shavings turn earth color.

They are much easier to move with shovels when working them into ground than straw or hay.
If your soil is dense, the shavings are a great help to loosen up your dirt.

Also, I've seen a lot of people here in Portland, Oregon put it into bags and sell it on Craigslist!
We've got llama, goat, duck and chicken poo.
At $6 a bag- I figure I'm sitting on a goldmine! Lol.

 

[Zoomom]

Does anyone know how long the shavings and chicken poop compost (mixed with veggie and kitchen waste and a bit of grass clippings) needs to "cook" before putting it on your veggie garden in the fall? Can I use this years shavings and poo this fall without killing everything next spring? Or should I hold it over till the next year? I iwll be putting one more load of shavings in it in about 2 weeks before switching to sand. Will it be too "hot"?
Thanks!
Lisa

 

[pips&peeps]

I have ten acres and a lot of it is very sandy and dry. I spread mine out in the field to make compost to improve the soil.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I spread it around various perennial plantings or spread it on the garden then turn it under. I prefer to do my composting on site.

 

[fiberart57]

I've made compost bins out of pallets and burlap. I'll wire the pallets together, line the inside with natural burlap and put things in; weeds, chicken bedding, kitchen produce, etc. I have three of these (soon to be four) and I rotate the mixtures. They are usually in various states of readiness.

I'll fill one up with layers of green waste, brown waste and chicken poo. I even go and pick most of it up off the lawn. I'll sometimes add horse poo. Inbetween layers of new material I"ll put some of the older, ready-to-go stuff to kick-start the process. Then I wet it down really well.

I can have usable material in about 30 days with the chicken poo. I keep it damp and turn it often. I use shavings and they break down quickly. It helps that I live in a hot climate although it's pretty dry here. I used to have to use treated water on the piles and it slowed down the composting process, but now I have irrigation and the difference is phenomenal.

Using pallets keeps the size manageable and keeps me with a ready supply. They are also tall enough that clipped-winged chickens can't get in there to eat composted materials.

The mixture is healthy and ready to go. I have a large population of red worms in the composted material so I'm pretty sure that things are going well.

Mary

 

[rodentdrem]

I bet those red worms are a great treat for the chickens too!

 

[Keara]

Quote:
too many variables to give you a set time. Compost is Chemistry.... weather, composition, adgitation.... all determin how fast it breaks down. I would recomend you visit a few composting web sites to figure how best to contruct your compost brew! Unfortunatly you can not just heap up old pine shavings with chicken poop and expect it to be black gold by next spring. But watch out composting can become an addictive activity.

 

[Wifezilla]

Unfortunatly you can not just heap up old pine shavings with chicken poop and expect it to be black gold by next spring.

You can in spots of Colorado

But we have extra UV to break things down.

Trying to keep decorative mulch in the landscaping is almost impossible stuff breaks down so fast!​