Who uses their chicken compost?

[ooptec]

hey,

Around here the birds free range so only get poop when roosting tho in winter they stay in a lot more.

I use straw for bedding and when poopy I spread wood ash from the furnace and add another layer of straw. I clean coops once a year as soon ground is thawing/thawed. I spread about six inches thick and till in the gardens as is quite gumbo here so the rough organic matter keeps the soil from being quite so brick like.

I only repeat every 3 years

Scrap pail from the kitchen gets tossed in front of the coop and it disappears egg shells and all. Citrus, potato parings and onions are always left. But they seem to disappear eventually. Tho if the oven is on anyways I will bake the potato parings and they go fast cooked. Left overs and moldy stuff from the fridge also gets tossed the same way and always w/everything the doggies take first crack and then birdies in descending order.

Tried alfalfa a few different ways too as is very good for the birdies as well as a amount of protein. But my idiots won't really eat it off the ground as much as when hang a bunch. Go figure eh? Alfalfa pellets are not to bad a price but mine were totally not interested but I run it thru a hand crank grain grinder to a coarse powder them i Mix it in w/either ground fat and trim from hunting/butchering or microwaved pumpkin from the garden as a warm winter treat. Keeps the goils in shape and those yolks nice and orange.



cheers

 

[redstarmama]

I dump my shavings in piles and the chickens go through them.Once spread out it composts quickly. I had an old pile I used in a flower bed,and boy did it look just like the expensive mulch I buy....only better.

We do the same thing. We have two piles, one inside the yard and one outside the yard. We always have composted soil at the ready thanks to the chickens constantly digging!

 

[bruceha2000]

My compost is pretty far from the house. I wonder if I should have a plastic bag in the garage for the food peelings and scraps. This would make it better. I'm always peeling potatoes, cutting onions, garlic, cracking 2 dozens of eggs each week. I think I'll give it a whirl and bring it down every 2-3 days.

Absolutely. About the only kitchen vegetable products we don't toss in the compost are corn cobs and fruit pits. They would compost given ENOUGH time, but who has that many years?

Once the chicks get here and big enough to eat kitchen scraps, the scraps will be first processed by the chickens THEN go into the compost pile - pre broken down as chicken poo. Speeds the process.

 

[bruceha2000]

Before you use your compost you need to make sure that it is not hot.It will burn your plants and whatever you use it on.I'm not sure how long,but it needs time to cool down.I feed my egg shells back to my chickens for calcium.When I clean my coop i remove the shavings and poo and place it in a pile or in my compost bin.It makes wonderful fertilizer.I then put fresh shavings in and do the deep liter method.

Actual temperature means nothing. The reason you don't want to put it on the plants right off is it will 'burn' them, but it is chemical (ammonia) burn, not temperature burn. Mix it in with everything else in the compost pile. When it all looks like really great dirt, it is REALLY GREAT DIRT and ready for use in planting, side dressing, etc.

 

[Red Barn Farms]

I made my compost bin from a plastic 50 gal. barrel. I used a hole saw to drill a few holes around the dia. for air flow. I then cut two holes on opposite sides right through the center to which I added a wooden dowel rod. The unit will sit on a wood stand which I added a handle so I can turn it over once a month which helps to keep it all mixed. I'll add fresh poo, straw, hay, pine needles, veggies, etc.

 

[Nicole01]

My compost pile is huge on the forest floor. I'm thinking of starting a new one just next to it. My husband needs to take a shovel to turn it. I like mine on the ground, there are a ton of earth worms inside.

My husband took a whole bag of just chicken poop and threw it over a freshly planted 15ft weeping willow. It's amazing what a little or a lot of chicken poo will do! The tree is doing fabulous! It's nice and damp soil where the roots are, so we don't have to water it often. It's even grown a bit since we planted it 1.5 months ago!

 

[franklinstreetwest]

I just have four little bantams, and I use pine shavings for litter.....when I clean the pen out I just "mulch" all the garden beds with the shavings. No burn, but it isn't a lot of poop either.

 

[trooper]

Actual temperature means nothing. The reason you don't want to put it on the plants right off is it will 'burn' them, but it is chemical (ammonia) burn, not temperature burn. Mix it in with everything else in the compost pile. When it all looks like really great dirt, it is REALLY GREAT DIRT and ready for use in planting, side dressing, etc.

Thanks for the break down.All I ever heard was it's hot and it'll burn your plants.Learn all the time

 

[Xtina]

They're already with each other drinking from the same waterier and the same feeder. If one sneezes at the feeder do the rest stop eating ?

I guess I thought that most of the diseases we were worried about were transferred by ingesting fecal matter, so to keep a healthy flock you would want to minimize the hens' intake of things that were contaminated with their own poop. I'm thinking e-coli and salmonella, mostly.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

Right now, I am without chicken, so it has been bunny poo for me. I really like using that as it doesn't burn plants (it is a 'cold' manure so long as it isn't soaked in rabbit pee), and scattering them on the surface turns them into little time release capsules.