Chicken poop straddles the line
between manure you can compost and manure you need to avoid. Since chickens will eat anything (and I do mean anything) they are omnivores so you need to
follow special rules if you want to compost the manure of your domestic avian
friend.
Cock-A-Doodle Do’s and Don’ts
If you decide to add chicken manure to your compost, follow a few basic precautions to make sure any pathogens in the manure do not make you or your family sick.
- Wear gloves when handling manure.
- Practice hot composting techniques with manure to ensure the pile heats up enough to kill pathogens.
- Only use fully composted manure on your plants (nothing fresh).
- Wash all vegetables planted in soil that you amended with compost derived from manure.
- If you are susceptible to food borne illness (e.g., very young children, pregnant women) avoid eating raw vegetables planted in soil that you amended with compost derived from manure.
- Do not use chicken manure in vermicomposting.
Chicken-Out
Each chicken will create about
two cubic feet of manure in a year. Even with a few chickens, all of that poop
and associated bedding really adds up! Of course, like other birds their manure
is mixed with urine in a gross weird mess (sorry to get so graphic, but what
did you expect?).
If you keep chickens, you
know the smell of ammonia all too well and know that you must clean up the fowl
droppings often (pun intended).
Which Comes First?
Fresh chicken manure is way
too strong to apply directly to plants or even work into soil as an amendment.
It would damage the plant roots and possibly kill the plant. However, chicken
manure makes an excellent addition to your compost pile since it has higher
levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium than most other domestic animal
manures. The organisms in your compost bin will break the manure down
into a soil amendment your plants will love.
After the manure has fully
composted, give the compost plenty of time to cure (at least two months). Although
a little extra work, composting chicken manure creates a beautiful, black
crumbly material high in nutrients for your plants.
No comments:
Post a Comment