Sooo much pooping

[TheChookKeeper]

Hello all!

 

I've always been under the impression that chicken poop was far too harsh to be used anywhere near anything living... but more recent enquiries have led me to think they actually chicken poop is superb stuff, and I should positively treasure it!

 

The last person I spoke to about this (I don't walk down the road accosting strangers... honest), said that I should just dump all my chicken poop into my compost bin, and leave it for a year, then mix it in with my compost I use for the veggie seeds.

 

If this is possible, and would act as fertiliser, that would be FANTASTIC! My 7 chickens produce a truly astonishing amount of poop - if I could reuse it... that would be grand!

 

 

However - I have a problem. Aren't you supposed to "layer" it in the compost bin with garden waste etc? I only have a small garden, and throughout the year, only create a few handfuls of garden waste - everything from the kitchen either goes in the chickens, the worms, or the bokashi bin.

 

Can I just dump chicken poo in there on top of chicken poo, or what? Equally, I don't want a steaming pile of smelly chicken poo in the corner of my garden?

 

What should I do!?!?

[majorbloodnock]

Well, most of our composting goes on in compost bins in the allotment. However, we've got a bin in the garden for leaf compost, and it happens to be right next to the chicken run. Therefore, whenever we clean out the chickens we empty the trays straight in with the leaf compost.

 

Admittedly our trays start off lined with a sheet of newspaper and a sprinkling of aubiose, but it composts down quicker than the leaves, and leaf compost is supposed to be left for a long time anyway. The result is excellent.

 

If, however, your girls are creating more than you can compost, you can have a quick search on "manure tea" on this forum. I'm sure I posted something a while ago about making it.....

[Ain't Nobody Here]

I have two compost bins (which are full ) and chuck all the poo, Easibed/Hemcore and some of the pootray liner newspaper (if it's really soggy ) in there along with the household veg waste.

 

I give excess poo to my neighbour . (She did ask for it )

[chickencam]

All of ours goes into our 4 compost bins layered with the newpaper from the houses and our veg waste. We usually find that stuff from the summer is ready for the garden the following spring. We had mixed feelings about our huge salad crops last year though when we thought about what they had grown in, but boy were they lush and tasty

[C&T]

It is great stuff!!

 

Heartily recomend it on the garden. My Dad takes the spare Hemcore from the run when we run out of room - and his roses had an amazing year last year!

 

Like you, layering the compost bin isn't always that easy. But if you stir it, it will work fine. I take one of the sides off, pull all the compost out, mix it all up, and put it back in again. The Chooks also love helping with this process... In fact I don't need to do too much of the actual mixing!!

 

I do a big "stir" at the end of autumn - and come spring I have some wonderful compost to straight onto the garden. I'll also stir once or twice through the summer, depending on weather, level of compost etc etc.

[TheChookKeeper]

Great news - thanks everyone.

 

I look forward (as much as possible! ) to starting to load my compost bin up this weekend with a bumper load of squit!

 

What I do have in quite large supplies, as well as the chook poop, is the Easibed that the ducks sleep (and poo) on... would this be good stuff to "layer" with?

I clean them out each week - and get through loads of the easibed... again, if I could shove that in the compost bin, in between the chook poop, that would be good!

[Valkyrie]

This winter we have had more aubiose and poo than anything else, so is taking a while to disappear (plus when ratty came-a-calling we stopped putting veggie waste down for a while - munch on poo!). But now spring is knocking at the door I'm hoping that it will start to decompose more rapidly - plus we left the lids off to get soaking wet as an extra deterrent (highly delighted the robin!). All covered now and ready for another turning next month.

[Couperman]

I did an experiment with our chickeny poo/easibed compost last year. It didn't look rotted down enough to me as you could still see wood chip in it even though it was a year old. Anyway I spread a couple of inches of it on one bed and planted onion sets.

 

Judging by the amount of comments I received about my onions I would say it is good gear.

 

We got a huge crop of huge onions, they have all stored brilliantly and we still have loads left.

 

So I think we are going to have to get some more hens so we can have more poo (and more eggs of course).

 

Chicken poo is far too valuable to give away

 

I have four compost bins at home and I generally fill two and then when I start filling the third I layer it with old stuff from the first bin, veggie peelings and spent potting compost and work down the line.

 

When bin four is full I will ship it down to the allotment and mix it in with the huge bin there or spread it on the vacant beds while I grow stuff in the others.

 

I don't know how well this works yet as I still haven't got a full bin 4. But it seems to be producing good looking compost. So time will tell.

 

Kev.

[TAJ]

All of ours goes into our 4 compost bins layered with the newpaper from the houses and our veg waste. We usually find that stuff from the summer is ready for the garden the following spring. We had mixed feelings about our huge salad crops last year though when we thought about what they had grown in, but boy were they lush and tasty

 

Yes same here 4 bins (3 on allotment), mainly chcken poo, but veg waste and shredded paper mixed in.

 

Tracy