I recently got a fantastic question from a friend about chicken manure and what is the best way to use it as fertilizer without causing pollution. A very thoughtful question and since I discussed chickens last week and touched on this issue a little bit I thought I’d expand on it some more and share more options for manure management.
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| Chickens are manure machines |
The balance between manure and fertilizer depends on how many chickens you have and how much garden. You want to make sure manure composts before applying it to plants. Adding chicken waste to a compost bin is an excellent way to get it really hot, but it will take awhile for it to completely compost.
We actually put most of our garden waste (sans toxic plants like rhubarb leaves and tomato plants) and all of our kitchen scraps in our chicken yard. What they don’t eat they compost for us by turning it through scratching. Every couple of weeks we rake everything (plus additional manure from goats and chickens) back into a pile so they can continue to dig around in it. Of course they also add a lot of extra manure as well.
We add what is in that compost pile (manure and everything else) to our vegetable beds when we finish our harvest in the fall and remove old plants. This gives it ample time to continue to compost before planting in the Spring. We will also take the more broken down stuff and put it around our fruit trees in the Winter when most are dormant.
As for the barn area, we use the deep litter method, meaning we have about 6-8″ of hay down. Droppings go into it and just get mixed in and covered by more hay over time. It will slowly compost itself. We only need to clean out the barn once a year. What we remove will go into the pile in the chicken yard to be used the following year. An additional benefit of deep litter is that it provides warmth for the animals in the winter caused by the microbial activity in it.
Another option is to build a chicken tractor which you move around your yard. This helps keep manure from being concentrated in just one spot and allows the chickens to free range without destroying your plants. Their manure is in small amounts and doesn’t need to be composted and is already deposited where you need it. We used to have a tractor, but we have too many chickens now to use it and it can be difficult to herd them into it when it gets large and unwieldy.
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Do you do a crop of fall veggies? Or do you just let everything go fallow over winter?
I live in Florida, zone 8b, and I feel it just gets too hot too quickly for some of my favorite veggies during the spring.
My plan is to plant my brassicas, peas and other cool-weather crops in the fall, but I'm nervous about turning around and replanting the same areas for my spring/summer veggies.
I'd love to hear if you have any advice for me.
B, that's a really good question. I think I'm going to actually make that a post as it will be too long for a comment. I will post that on Wednesday.
I was having a similar thought on putting the compost pile into the run. I just worry that dropping melons and such into a compost pile in the run will just be asking for raccoons & possums to come in there, though, I suppose they could come in the run anytime they feel like it. The coop is secure (untested as of yet), so I guess we'd have to see. I know it would make my life a lot easier to have the compost/chicken manure/chicken scrap feeding post in one central location.
motherhen68, our chickens go nuts over our kitchen scraps and even though we throw them in around 7pm, they are pretty much all gone before bed time. They esp. love melon, which will be nothing but skin in a matter of minutes.
i love to watch the chickens eat melon. they totally freak when i bring an overripe mushy one out.
We do the same thing, all non-toxic kitchen fruits and veg are recycled through the chickens first, before hitting the compost pile. First time we added the chicken manure to the regular compost we were shocked how hot the pile got! I know 'compost happens', but it certainly got things cooking faster!
We also give the chickens scraps. We put chicken, goat, and rabbit manure on the garden, let it rain. Then we till it a few times before we plant in the spring. Our friends who garden come over to take manure for their gardens too. That is what we do with our chicken manure.
The Chicken Keepers