Today was the first-ever Juneau Chicken Summit. It was definitely interesting to gather interested people, and it served as a good basis to expand for next year. I was asked to be on the Q&A panel and also gave a short talk on composting. I was a little nervous at the idea of talking in front of a large audience. The only other "speech" I've given was in a college class, and the peer reviews I got included lots of "not very professional." But I decided to give it a go anyway, and this time I had lots of positive feedback! Talking to other chicken raisers and seeing other set-ups on the Tour-de-Coop sparked me up a bit, and I'm going to try to write a bit about birds here in the next few weeks. Tour-de-Coop, by the way, isn't a bicycling tour like the Tour de France, as I was envisioning. We definitely drove our cars all over town! Anyway, here's a copy of the handout I made:
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Chicken Manure Management
Lisa Daugherty, farm enthusiast and experimenter
Lisa Daugherty, farm enthusiast and experimenter
Animal manure can be pollution or it can be the gold that makes food grow. It might be able to be other things……If you don’t have the time to design a car that runs off manure, or piece together a house that is heated by it, you might try composting.
Cold vs. Hot Composting
Cold Composting Hot Composting
time investment minimal slightly more
structural investment minimal (scrounging) to extravagant same
time required to yield 1 year adding material + 1-6 months decomposting,
1-2 years decomposting and aging 2-3 months aging
pathogen and weed no yes
seed destruction
If you aren’t interested in composting and don’t want to spend time dealing with or thinking about it, freecycle your waste into someone else‘s garden or cold compost. If the idea of turning poo into kale and carrots excites you, then hot compost so you won’t have to wait long to fertilize your garden!
seed destruction
If you aren’t interested in composting and don’t want to spend time dealing with or thinking about it, freecycle your waste into someone else‘s garden or cold compost. If the idea of turning poo into kale and carrots excites you, then hot compost so you won’t have to wait long to fertilize your garden!
Manure Collection
Bedding Types:
- Purchased: straw, wood shavings, pine pellets
- Scrounged: leaves, moss, shredded paper
Bedding Systems:
- Spick and Span: muck out the bedding completely once a month.
- If you continually muck you continually add small amounts to your compost pile. It will probably be cold composting, where organisms such as worms and fungi slowly decompose material. If have quite a bit of bedding and you’re adding adequate greens you may have hot composting.
- Continuous : regularly rake bedding to mix manure; muck out once or twice a year
- If you rake manure in weekly, your bedding will go much further. If you have a thick enough layer during the winter, the top layer will be frozen but the underneath will be composting. Muck out coop in spring and fall into compost. You will be able to make large compost piles all at once. if you add greens you’ll be hot composting; if you don’t add greens, it could go either way but will probably be cold.
Composting Setup
The Bins
Any large (3x3foot) container should work. I make my bins out of pallets. I screw three full-sized pallets together to make a U shape. I position them so the bin is wider than it is tall. I cut a fourth pallet in half and use one piece for the front. As the bin fills up I add more slats across the front as needed. I cover the bins with plywood, metal roofing, or tarps. Air can get in through the pallet sides but rain stays out. It usually costs me the screws to put it together. Freecycle and the roadside are amazing tools!
Depending on how large your operation is, you’ll probably want multiple bins. Three is a good number, as it allows for one bin to be added to, one to be composting, and one to be aging. If you’re hot composting two might be sufficient.
The Biofilter
A biofilter is a natural material that filters…in this case the smell of decomposition. You’ll need one! Always cover your pile. If you add anything that smells to your pile, cover it with a biofilter. A good biofilter has lots of air space that it can trap odors in. Examples are leaves, sawdust, straw, dried seaweed, moss, and shredded paper. Always have some on hand.
The Tools
Things will be much more pleasant if you have: standard rubber gloves and rain pants; a tote or bucket; a pitchfork, rake, or hand rake; a scrub brush; a hose.
How To Compost
Cold Composting
- Put the coop muckings into your bin
- Add your food scraps
- Keep doing this until the bin is full….(maybe a year)
- Start a new bin and let the old decompose.
- Check on the old bin occasionally. When you can’t recognize anything you put in, it’s compost.
- Let the compost age a while (2-3 months)
- Use it! Till it into your garden and watch everything grow!
- Eat some delicious food from your garden that all started with a seed and some chicken poo!
Hot Composting
Similar to above, but also:
- Acknowledge that a compost pile is alive. It needs nutrients, fiber, air, water, and protection.
- Mix traditional “greens” and “browns” in the pile. Divert stuff from the landfill or find stuff in the wild. Manure adds microbes, so don‘t worry about finding those.
- Add lots of material at once. Get scraps from neighbors; the more the merrier.
- Give the pile air. Layer bulky things in the mix to add pore space. When it cools, turn it and add more air.
- Monitor moisture. Add water as the heat evaporates some; add dry material if the pile is soggy. It should be moist, but you shouldn’t be able to squeeze water out of it.
- Have a big, covered pile. This protects the pile from the rain and makes it self-insulating from the cold.
- Have a biofilter. Put several inches of dry material on top/sides of the pile to filter our smells and keep critters at bay.
- Have a composting thermometer. It lets you know what is going on so you know what to do. If it's not heating up, you need to check the above list. If it's too hot, split the pile in two.
- When the pile cools fork it into a new bin, trying to get the edges of the old pile into the center of the new pile. Repeat as needed until it doesn't heat up and looks like compost.
Other Considerations
Dirty Water
- The chickens’ water will occasionally become dirty. Pour this water onto the compost pile instead of leaching those nutrients into the ground.
- When you scrub totes and buckets used to transport manure, pour the used water on the compost pile. If you use a biodegradable soap, it’s all good!
Carcasses
- Chickens compost! Toss them in the pile and don’t disturb. If they haven’t decomposed when you find them, they will STINK. If you’re hot composting they will disappear quickly.
Feathers
Composting can be as easy or hard as you make it. Don't worry about what you NEED to do--just experiment! You can read about lots of things NOT to do or ALWAYS to do, but it comes down to this: No one is the boss of composting! Every situation is different: different climate, different resources, different schedules, different set-ups.....Be creative, get to work, and see what you can turn into soil! You’ll come to think of cleaning out the coop as harvesting manure!
- They compost! But also consider using them (or passing them on) for art projects, fly tying, and jewelry making!
Composting can be as easy or hard as you make it. Don't worry about what you NEED to do--just experiment! You can read about lots of things NOT to do or ALWAYS to do, but it comes down to this: No one is the boss of composting! Every situation is different: different climate, different resources, different schedules, different set-ups.....Be creative, get to work, and see what you can turn into soil! You’ll come to think of cleaning out the coop as harvesting manure!
Helpful Resources
- Composting - the #1 best way to learn about composting is to do it!
- Cooperative Extension publication HGA-01027 - http://www.uaf.edu/ces/ah/soils/#compost
- The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins - about composting human manure but very applicable to composting in general
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And to this I should add:
Trouble Shooting
- Bad smell in coop -
- poor bedding mix - rake manure into bedding and add more bedding.
- stale air - get some fresh air flowing through the coop
- Bad smell in compost pile
- too much nitrogen (chicken poo or food scraps) Add carbon, i.e. straw, leaves, shredded paper, sawdust, wood chips.
- not enough biofilter. Add more material to top/sides of pile.
- not enough air - jam a piece of rebar into the pile and wiggle back and forth to make an air hole through the pile. Make several holes.
- pile too wet. If it's wetter than a wrung out sponge it's too wet and will compact into an anaerobic stink! Add more carbonaceous materials.
- Pile not heating up
- not the right mixture of greens vs browns. Add greens (food scraps or live plant material)
- too dry - add some water to the pile
- Pile too hot (>160 F)
- too much microbial action - split pile in two to avoid killing microbes
- pile too large - 3x3feet is a good size to avoid over-heating
