One of the reasons we decided to have chickens was for the poop for the compost pile.
And, did you know that one chicken can ‘make’ as much as 45 lbs. of chicken do-do a year! Times 5 chooks and ya got a lot of manure for the compost pile! It doesnt’ happen in large quantities - I think I get maybe 2 lbs. total a week when I clean out the coop. I do believe in keeping my coop clean to lessen flies and other breeding nasties, which is why Sunday is the poop-to-compost day.
This past weekend it was my self-appointed task to clean out the coop after being gone for 5 days and consolidate the compost piles.
We have a 'new' pile started behind the barn which needed to be
integrated with the remainder of the ‘old’ pile, which we had just used most of for the tomato and pepper plantings.
Soiled straw and the poop deposits get mixed and watered into the compost pile.
It took 3 trips with the "Mule" bed full to move it over...and, dang fine back and arm exercise. With a pitchfork in hand, bend, scoop, twist and toss. About a million times, then switch arms and do the other way another million times. The drive over to the new pile and layer it in with the fresh coop offerings and the old pile.
Our compost is also the worm factory. We started back in 2010 with an order of 2,000 red wiggler worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm. And, now we cycle hundreds of thousand worms through, some of which get fed by me to the chickens for a special snack; the others eat and digest all the matter than ends up in the compost pile. If all those worms are doing their job we end up with a beautiful product - moist and earthly smelling and finely ground into ....well... compost!
This new pile is now about 4 ft. tall and a base diameter of about 6 ft. It will shrink over time and to speed up the process we turn the pile a couple of times a week. It takes me about an hour. There is a special way to turn compost...oh yes!...to integrate all parts and re-distribute the eating machines [aka worms]. Top goes on the bottom, sides to the interior, interior to the outside, bottom to the top.
As I turn, I can see the worms: sometimes there are hundreds on the straw-poop mess from the chicken coop; other times, they have wormed [haha] their way into an orange or piece of fruit. You can’t believe how efficient a worm is. When the compost is done, there is no way to tell what you started with, everything is turned into fine, moist crusts, indistinguishable from the original vegetable, fruit, straw or leaf. Truly one of Nature’s miracles.and ... for a few handfuls of worm snackies to the girls!
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| Worms? Did Karla say worms? |
If you’d like further information, we followed one of the methods described in “ Rodale’s Book of Composting”.
Available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0878579915
Also, Uncle Jims’ Worm Farm website is www.unclejimsworfmfarm.com
