Chickens and Compost: Getting Lazy with Chomposting

I was browsing through my very first  issue of Backyard Poultry magazine, and I came across an article that made me remember something my husband said yesterday.

"Look, the chickens found the compost pile," he pointed out, laughing, as we watched them scratch and dig through the massive pile like eager little children tearing open Christmas presents. After 3 brutal months of near-constant snow cover, the air had warmed to 62 degrees, the sun was shining, the snow was melting, and the chickens were roaming. They had clumsily flown over the garden fence, and wandered back to our very messy compost pile (the inevitable result of lazy composting). Well, I thought, they're sure to find something good back there, and they are most certainly starving for anything, anything other than scratch.

And we didn't really give it a second thought. That is, until I starting reading this article about lazy composting (just my style!) using chickens. I was particularly attracted to the lazy part. See, I've never been too thorough with the turning and mixing required to keep microbial action going in the pile. Actually, I've never turned it or mixed it at all (even though I have a very cool, and as-of-yet unused, compost aerator tool). I always explain to curious guests that we are doing anaerobic composting (without oxygen), which is much slower but produces a richer compost, but the truth is we have simply mastered lazy composting. And by mastering, I mean without much to show for it....yet.

So here is the idea behind chicken composting, or as I suddenly just decided to call it, chomposting. Chickens naturally dig and scratch through the soil and any debris on top of it, shredding organic matter, searching for insects, and basically tilling the area on which they forage. We already knew that letting chickens roam on a grassy area destined to become a garden plot is a great way to till the soil without breaking a sweat. But we never applied that principle to composting. Let the chickens loose in the compost pile, and voila!, you have the turning and mixing and shredding required to accelerate the whole composting process (plus, of course, the added benefit of nutrient-rich chicken poop).

We are now planning to move the compost pile from behind the main garden plot to inside the chicken run. That way the chickens will have continuous access to the pile. I will dump kitchen scraps, weeds, plant trimmings, coffee grounds, etc. into the pile, and once the growing season begins shortly, we will also be able to add weeds and other plant matter.

(NOTE: The photo is one taken over the summer, hence all the greenery. I've got to get out there this week and get some new photos!)

Comments

[Lucy Holten]

I like the idea in principle, but I dread the loss of earthworms!! So I think I'll stick with the old - dig a trench, drop in compostables( including chook run materials,light branches, lawn clippings, shredded paper, hair clippings, leaves, cardboard pieces,horse or other manure, tissues, etc, etc,) then cover with good depth of the soil from where the next trench will be - adjacent and parallel to current one. Sometimes I stomp on it and water it in and plant seeds or seedlings straight into the newly turned soil. Other times I leave it for a while, then plant. My folks' way-Austrian/ Italian? Now in Australia!

[Nik Fingar]

I take the idea of composting chickens 1 step further. I've worked in restaurants for the past 15 years and i've always been amazed/appalled by the amount of good food that people waste and ends up in the landfill. About 1 1/2 years ago I started collecting food scraps in 5-gallon buckets to bring home and compost. Soon I realized how much work was involved in turning that much waste into good clean compost (that i so desparately wanted for my garden). I decided to get some chickens to aid in the process. Now I keep a flock of 30 laying hens (and growing) inside of an electric fence. They get all the food they need between the food scraps, the bugs(specifically the black soldier fly larvae), and all of the yard waste, grass clippings and mulch (that local tree service guys are more than glad to deliver to us for free!!) that we use to cover up the old food scraps. I'm trying to build up the size of my flock so that they can more efficiently utilize all of the food available to them. We keep a rooster or two in with the hens and the compost and we incubate as many eggs as we can (for now our capacity is 82 at a time). After a 3 week brooding period in which they eat chick starter and grit, we put the teenage chicks in moveable field pens (chicken tractors)where they supplement their feed with forage and bugs on the pasture. Once they mature, we let the hens join the compost flock and all but the biggest luckiest males are doomed for the oven. Using this method, the only time in our chickens' lives that costs us money is from when they first hatch until we put them on the compost pile. Commercial egg laying hens are usually only allowed to lay for 1 year beacause that is thier most productive year. We are trying to breed for longevity. If food cost is no longer a factor, you don't need to get 300 eggs a year from each bird to make a profit. If you only get 150 eggs a year from a hen but she lays for 6 years (like red jungle fowl do in nature) than that bird is more profitable in the long run. Whether you burn out a bird in a year or two or encourage them to act naturally, you still have to raise her up for 5 months before she starts laying.