easy way to compost...

some people kinda just make a pile in their chicken coop, claiming that the chickens turn it for them.

There is a farmer/writer in Virginia who does something similar with his cattle in the winter. He brings them into a pen to protect them from the cold. He starts by scattering a bag of corn on the floor of the pen. After a week of cattle dung he spreads another bag of corn. He repeats this every week until the cattle are let out in the spring. By then he has had to raise the fences because the floor of the pen has raised up under the cattle. Finally when the cattle are let out, he brings in a couple piglets. The pigs love the corn, especially the fermented corn at the bottom of the pen. When the pigs dig for the corn they root through the pen and fluff up the composted and compacted dung. When all the corn is gone, the pile is very fluffy and has the added nutrient of the pig dung. The farmer opens the pen and moves the compost out with a front end loader.

If you are getting bigger into chickens, you should look up this farmer. His name is Joel Salatin and he owns Polyface Farms in the Shenandoah Valley. Last time I read anything by him he had just upped his egg production to 30,000 dozen per year. Salatin is very motivational and has some unique ideas about raising chickens and managing other animals along side.

dchall .... mega thanks for link to Polyface Farms.

If I had to pick one person to aspire to be, he'd be the one. I like his creativity in solving problems in farming. Using pigs to turn your compost is just one of the genius ideas he writes about. Using chickens to clear cattle worms and flies out of the pasture is another.

Here is a link that might be useful: Google search for Joel Salatin

I use the deep litter method, whereby you clean the house out annually, forking the litter, and adding materials through the year if the house starts to smell. I can no longer find an article from Ohio, on the web, about the method, and how deep litter supplies the chickens with vitamin B, and that the method attracts a small fly which is a house fly predator, keeping flies down in the house.

The first year I did it, it was very successful. I started with about 8 inches of hay, pine shavings, and leaves, and added more as odors arose. I made the mistake of flipping it in January, though, and cooling the steaming, sawdust-like in appearance, composting litter down at a time when the chickens could have benefited from the warmth. I should have just covered it with straw or leaves until the weather improved. By spring the stuff was beautifully broken down.

The second house with more chickens could not be managed in this way. The house has lousy ventilation and there are a lot more chickens in the second house, plus I neglected to flip it in a timely manner last year, so when the cold temperatures hit, the deep litter froze solid. It was a disaster. This year, I flipped it more often, but decided last month that I needed to empty out the house and start over with 8 inches of material. Unfortunately, the shoveled out house contents are not as composted as the year-old stuff usually is, so I won't be using it until next fall.

I'm quite pleased how much compost my chickens produce. I gave a bunch to a neighbor last year and I'm giving a bunch to my brother this spring. My almost four-year-old hens are thinking of retiring from the egg laying business, but they're still great little producers of manure.