New to composting.... sort of

[ninnymary]

Bee, they have a poop board that I scrape daily. I was spreading this throughout the coop.

Where do you find JustOneBite? I've never seen it at Home Depot nor our local Ace hardware. I'm sure I can find it online.

Mary

 

[thistlebloom]

Bee, they have a poop board that I scrape daily. I was spreading this throughout the coop.

Where do you find JustOneBite? I've never seen it at Home Depot nor our local Ace hardware. I'm sure I can find it online.

Mary

It's not sold in California.

 

[catjac1975]

I have been doing it wrong!! I dump the stall cleanings from the barn into the chicken pen - they level a heaping wheel barrow load in less than an hour... but there is nothing left to take back out.. just the same old dirt floor chicken yard. I should dump INSIDE the coop! View attachment 17859

I put the horse manure into the veggie garden and the chickens range in there through the winter.

 

[ninnymary]

It's not sold in California.

It was banned because animals that ate the rats also died. These were barn owls, bobcats, coyotes, raccoons, and the endangered San Joaquin kit fox.

I wished they would allow city dwellers to use it. We don't have any of the above except racoons and those could all go away as far as I care.

Mary

 

[Beekissed]

https://www.amazon.com/Farnam-Just-...&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=justonebite+rat+poison

None of my animals that encountered the dead rats would eat them(cats, dogs, chickens), so I just picked them up and disposed of them. This one is one of the best because it can not be carried away and stored for later...they have to gnaw it off the bar and when they do, they die.

It's not as expensive around here as it is on Amazon, but if I couldn't get it around here, I'd definitely pay the money Amazon is asking. It's just that good.

 

[Beekissed]

Bee, they have a poop board that I scrape daily. I was spreading this throughout the coop.

Mary

There's your problem, then. Remove the poop board, let them drop it where it can be concentrated, then pile up dry bedding on top of it each day or every other day. This caps the moisture contained in the feces, covers the feces so they don't attract flies, and lets your litter mass digest the fecal matter. Don't stir around in that and don't encourage the chickens to do so.

Add materials that will create air spaces like woody stems, twigs, wood chips on occasion, etc. When it's dry, place some green matter in there...I even bury kitchen scraps there that the chickens won't eat, such as potato peels, onions, etc.

I have places to one side of the roosts where no poop is deposited but adjacent to this area where I place the scraps they do eat. When they consume those and leave any behind, those just get buried too.

The trick is to concentrate all your efforts in the spot where the feces are mostly deposited, layer in materials there. Poop boards are too much work and defeat the purpose of DL.

In these pics you can see where I deposited most of my composting materials...beneath the roosts. And more gets placed there every time I cover the nightly deposits, so even though I do use deep litter in other parts of the coop, it gets deposited back under the roosts over and over until I have to add more in other parts of the coop.

The chickens will work the edges of this compost pit under the roosts all winter long until they've worked the finer particles to the front of the coop. I'll keep taking my pitchfork and utilizing the larger particles from the front towards the back each day and slowly but surely the fines are all that's left in the front of the coop and I have to remove those and put in fresh materials in the front portion of the coop so that I can use them in the back of the coop, under the roosts.

It's an interesting cycle and, in the summer months, it produces compost rather quickly due to the warmer temps and increased humidity. This coop is perfect for that, as I can raise the sides of the tarps for maximum airflow throughout the entire coop to dispel any added heat and moisture produced by the litter pack.

 

[thistlebloom]

That's an admirable system you have going there Bee.

 

[chefsdreams]

wow, this is a great thread. i, too, am fairly new to composting so most everything is a learning curve for me.
a friend gave me this book: "Teaming With Microbes" by Jeff Lowenfels.
there is a section of 'compost tea brewers'. has anybody had any experience with this? i like the idea but it sounds like a whole bunch of work.

 

[ducks4you]

I first read about "manure tea" about a decade ago for fertilizing during the summer. If is SOUNDS like work, it IS work!!! I believe that compost tea brewers are nothing more than letting compost sit and "infect" the poor soil underneath it with healthy microbes when the brown and greens leach out below as they are rained on. It could be as in an article I read about creating 5 piles, one with nothing and turning and moving each pile every few days to speed up the composting. That was a Big NO for me!!!!
Where WE live is north of where the glaciers stopped. People THINK that we have the best soil in the country, but talking to the natives and the farmers I have learned that the "black soil" depth of our topsoil is between 3"-18" and can vary throughout my 5 acre property, which used to be part of the original farm property in our tiny town, the house being owned by the original farmer. When I took to "double digging" the first 4 garden beds several years ago there was clay underneath. My first beds had a LOT of clay in them. Tilth nevers lasts forever. Just like in other parts of the country, if you don't put microbes and food for them and the worms and the other soil beasties, you will use up the soil.
One of the reasons I am playing with a 3' x 6' (separate from the others) bed is bc I never got around to double digging it, just making a raised bed frame and filling it in with a mixture of garden soil and stall waste. I will be digging it 2 feet below the surface this weekend. I have begun to remove the soil which last year was amended with compost to muck buckets and big planters that I have in one of my outbuildings. Why? To get the soil to dry out so that when I put it back into my "hotbed" it will be friable and not either soaking wet or frozen. A year after composting everything has broken down and can be safely used and won't burn out my tender seedlings. I have NOTHING to lose playing with this bed, since the frames are rotting out and need to be replaced and I have a collection of old windows to put on top. This is a labor intensive project, but I don't have to do it all in one day.
TIME is your friend when composting and you need PATIENCE.
I started studying up on Colonial gardening and discovered that it was the WEALTHY Colonists who had big gardens. Everybody else had small ones in the 17th Century-18th Century or none at all. They had ENOUGH work to do and you need to decide which garden battles to pick. Constantly having to labor away at your garden soon makes it a chore.
I learned that by buying/feeding my horses hay (in 1999, when we first moved to the property) that they planted their own 3 acre pasture that HAD been a cornfield, harvested right before we purchased the property (October 31, 1999.) I certainly didn't plant it! Likewise, where I fed hay in the South Pasture (~1/2 acre-3/4 acre) seeds dropped last Fall and there is pasture grass growing up. Likewise where I dump from the stalls, grass and pasture grass grows up if it is undisturbed. I have ENOUGH animal caretaking to do daily, esPECIALLY in the winter!!