Manure from chickens helps build a nutritious compost for your garden.
Chicken manure can be composted, along with the wood shavings in which the manure is deposited. When decomposed, the organic materials become a healthy addition to flower, fruit and vegetable gardens. Chicken manure provides a variety of helpful bacteria that can improve your garden soil. According to Seattle Tilth, the manure helps your soil retain moisture and adds nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to feed your plants. If you raise chickens, try to have at least three compost heaps curing at the same time to get the maximum use from all the manure they produce. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Collect chicken manure from your property regularly. Scoop up the manure as well as the wood chips or sawdust you use to contain it.
2. Add your chicken manure to a compost heap. For every shovelful of manure, add about shovelful of greens, grass clippings or other organic material. Mix the pile well and water it lightly.
3. Build a heap about 5 feet square and 3 feet high. Allow the heap to heat up and decompose for three months. Beginning in the fourth month, pull the compost heap apart from the center with a pitchfork twice a month for three more months. Move the center, or core, compost to the edges. Scrape the edge materials to the center.
4. Let the decomposing heap sit dormant for six to eight weeks. If you're working in your garden, use compost from other heaps during this dormancy period, and start a new heap with the manure you're collecting.
5. Check the contents of your chicken-manure compost heap regularly after the dormancy period. Apply the compost to your garden when it looks like dirt and is dry and loose. Add 1 part compost to 2 parts soil for every planting hole or row.
Tags: your garden, compost heap, Chicken manure, compost your, compost your garden