Doing a little sifting in my chicken run compost system. I have way more compost than I use, and figured I might harvest a bit today to feed the lawn a bit before the leaves start turning and we’re in full-on “moving leaves to the chicken run” duty every weekend.
My sifter was bult to fit on my wheelbarrow, but fits pretty well over the bins as well. A scoop of compost, rake back and forth with the shovel, repeat. The chicken feed bag is for little bits of plastic I find when sifting. This area was the home of a big compost pile when I was bringing in food waste….so there’s a good number of plastic fruit stickers (the bane of my existence).
Certainly not a fast process, but filling a bin took maybe 15 min working at a leisurely pace. I dumped the chunky bits back into the system. If I’d been thinking, I would have had a second bin for them and used them as a mulch.
After filling up four bins, I spread them on a bit of lawn I just mowed. Feeding lawn maybe isn’t that big a deal, but I want to improve my soil and when I mow grass the clippings all go right back into the system. So, I guess in a way all I did today was move nutrients back and forth. That’d be a bad thing if I didn’t desperately need the exercise.
I’m going to try to dose the rest of the lawn over the coming weeks before the leaves start falling and the chicken run gets filled up again.
One thing that is amazing is just how fast the chickens process waste in the run. One of those bins came from an area where I dumped a dozen leaf bags of leaves and clippings the week of Memorial Day. Here we are on Labor Day and they’re processed to dust.
waddlekins
TIL chicken run composting đ we have lost too many chooks and ducks to foxes so wont be getting more, but this looks beautiful đ
DudeInTheGarden
Our chicken run is the same. We throw leaves, straw, and the bedding from inside the coop, out into the run. The chickens poop on it, dig it in, break it down. They get fruits and vegetables that we can’t or won’t eat, and that gets churned in as well. Once a year I take a couple of trailer loads out and add it either to garden beds or to my compost, depending on the time of year. I want to let it sit for at least 3 months before I grow anything, as it could have new chicken poop in it. So fall/winter, it goes on the garden beds, but in the spring, it gets composted.
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Doing a little sifting in my chicken run compost system. I have way more compost than I use, and figured I might harvest a bit today to feed the lawn a bit before the leaves start turning and we’re in full-on “moving leaves to the chicken run” duty every weekend.
My sifter was bult to fit on my wheelbarrow, but fits pretty well over the bins as well. A scoop of compost, rake back and forth with the shovel, repeat. The chicken feed bag is for little bits of plastic I find when sifting. This area was the home of a big compost pile when I was bringing in food waste….so there’s a good number of plastic fruit stickers (the bane of my existence).
Certainly not a fast process, but filling a bin took maybe 15 min working at a leisurely pace. I dumped the chunky bits back into the system. If I’d been thinking, I would have had a second bin for them and used them as a mulch.
After filling up four bins, I spread them on a bit of lawn I just mowed. Feeding lawn maybe isn’t that big a deal, but I want to improve my soil and when I mow grass the clippings all go right back into the system. So, I guess in a way all I did today was move nutrients back and forth. That’d be a bad thing if I didn’t desperately need the exercise.
I’m going to try to dose the rest of the lawn over the coming weeks before the leaves start falling and the chicken run gets filled up again.
One thing that is amazing is just how fast the chickens process waste in the run. One of those bins came from an area where I dumped a dozen leaf bags of leaves and clippings the week of Memorial Day. Here we are on Labor Day and they’re processed to dust.
TIL chicken run composting đ we have lost too many chooks and ducks to foxes so wont be getting more, but this looks beautiful đ
Our chicken run is the same. We throw leaves, straw, and the bedding from inside the coop, out into the run. The chickens poop on it, dig it in, break it down. They get fruits and vegetables that we can’t or won’t eat, and that gets churned in as well. Once a year I take a couple of trailer loads out and add it either to garden beds or to my compost, depending on the time of year. I want to let it sit for at least 3 months before I grow anything, as it could have new chicken poop in it. So fall/winter, it goes on the garden beds, but in the spring, it gets composted.