Chickens are omnivores. They love meat and I am sure they are eating tons of (raw) bugs and worms as well. I feed my chickens all of my food scraps except raw meat. (it is easy to toss it into the microwave to cook it) And I use their poop in the garden. I like to put it into the garden in the fall after the garden is cleaned out. This gives it the winter to get the "heat" out of it. You might want to put it in your garden in the height of summer if your garden generally dies out that time of year. Kay.

kimmsr, I'm sorry, I planted cereal rye, not ryegrass. We have a mild climate in my lower part of zone 7 and I wanted to add to my beds this winter. I wanted to increase the abundance of mycorrhizal spores in my lasagna beds. Also, since I am using oak leaves for my brown, I have a ridiculous amount of oak sprouts every spring and they are tenacious. I was hoping the weed-suppressing allelopathic compounds in the rye and the smothering cover of the rye would help defeat the mighty acorns. Sorry about the confusion. Madmagic, thank you for the cover crop pdf. I haven't read it cover to cover, ahem, but it has some fascinating info within. Interbay mulch, yes, I'm following most of the same principles, but burlap is not in the budget. Given time I can certainly scrouge some. But for now I will follow as kimmsr leads, and use newspaper covered with shredded leaves over my decaying cereal rye. Thank you so much for your clarifications.

I have some minimal experience with chicken manure. Most of my experience is with rabbit manure which is quite different from chicken manure. It is said to have even more nitrogen than chicken manure. Rabbit manure is called a cold manure because it drops from the bunny's butt ready to be put in the garden, and I had an abundant supply until recently when the lady I got it from wanted to sell it. Now I have to find another source of manure for my watermelons. I did, and I put a lot of it around my watermelons, but now they are in the vining stage, and I wanted to side dress them with a high nitrogen substance. I found a chicken house where I could get some and laid it out on top of the bunny poop several inches from the melons, and they are growing nicely. I feel certain that chicken manure tea washed out to the young roots and contributed to the lush growth after the rain. I am not worried about pathogens because normal people do not eat watermelon roots. Normal people eat watermelons. On the other hand I put some fresh chicken manure in another place and thought I could put some clay in the hole near the place where the transplant roots would come out, but it was not enough. Those are not doing so good, and I will probably have to replace them with more transplant watermelons and some bunny poop that I forgot that I saved. I have one other chicken manure experience that I would like to share. Years ago when I did not know where I could get some manure, I grew tomatoes which were obviously needing some. My children were riding with me when I saw what I thought was manure in front of a chicken farm driveway on a rural paved road near my house. A truck had accidentally dropped a small load, and I looked around to see what I had on hand. Fortunately I found a whisk broom in my car with a Walmart bag, and I stopped the car to get out and sweep up the Godsend on that quiet country road. My young children thought I was crazy, but I went home and side dressed my tomatoes with a thin coat over what they were growing in, and it perked them up nicely. The moral of my stories is that from my few limited experiences I have found that very small amounts of fresh chicken manure can be used on vegetables if the roots do not grow directly into the stuff too quickly. A weakened highly diluted manure tea will probably not bother heavy feeders like tomatoes, watermelons or possibly cabbage (I have no chicken manure experience with cabbage, but I know they are heavy feeders).To be effective however the roots have to grow into something else like plain dirt, potting soil, compost, or other aged manure that is abundant.

When I did, in my ignorance, add animal manures to the garden beds without first composting those manures, I did see an increase in "weeds" and it made no difference if it was manure from dairy cows, horses, pigs, goats, sheep, llamas or alpacas, unless it was dehydrated manure. It seems the heat used to dry that manure was enough to kill any "weed" seeds. Since the easiest method to keep these "weed" seeds out of the garden is to compost the manure first it simply makes sense to do that, along with all the other very good reasons to compost manure before applying it to your garden soil.