What to do with Chicken Poop
Don’t underestimate what you can do with quality biowaste in your garden and farm.
What biowaste can do for your garden and farm.
Most people get chickens with only one magical moment in mind: reaching into the nest for a freshly laid egg. A pleasing reward, indeed, but according to Harvey Ussery, author of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An all-natural approach to raising chickens and other fowl for home and market growers (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011), the real magic is in the poop. Ussery, who has experimented with chickens for three decades, says would-be chicken keepers might do best to start with the question: What should I do with all this poo?
Deep Litter Magic
As a green (nitrogen-rich) element, chicken poop works wonderfully with other materials in the carbon (brown), nitrogen (green) and H2O formula that, with agitation and time, transforms organic waste into rich compost.
Some keepers collect manure daily or weekly and add it to compost bins or piles. Kristeva Dowling, who shares her farming journey in her book, Chicken Poop for the Soul: A year in search of food sovereignty (Caitlin Press, 2011), says she used to scrape poop off the chicken roosts daily. Now, she relies on a
lazier approach, the deep-litter method, with a good end result.
“Basically, you put 12 inches of litter on the floor of the coop,” Dowling says. By litter, she means the bedding used on the floor of the coop. She scatters some dry corn into the bedding each day to entice her chickens to scratch about, tilling in the poop — just as you might use a pitchfork or a rotating bin to turn a compost pile. Dowling says that she doesn’t have to change the litter more than once a year. By then, it’s ready for the garden.
When cleaning out the coop, Ussery advises to leave a little of the old bedding to “inoculate” the fresh litter with good microbes. As the deep-litter method works like a compost heap, the same microbes are present.
“As the microbes colonize, they crowd out pathogenic organisms,” Ussery says. “Among the metabolites of the microbes’ life processes are vitamins B12 and K, and other naturally immune-enhancing compounds.”
Chickens ingest these beneficial compounds as they scratch and peck about, turning the litter. The method takes advantage of the natural process Ussery calls “magic,” and transforms nasty chicken poop into something valuable without a foul odor.
There are some caveats. To balance out the nitrogen-rich chicken poop (green), you’ll need more carbonaceous material (brown) than you would for a compost heap, hence the foot-deep bedding. Some keepers start with half as much litter, and add more dry bedding as time passes, particularly under the roosts. Find out what’s cheap or free in your area. Aged wood shavings work well.
We use the abundant dried leaves from our mature oak trees.
Maybe a neighbor can provide fallen leaves. Peanut shells are the carbonaceous choice of Will Harris, who raises chickens and other livestock at White Oak Pastures, his fourthgeneration farm in peanut-rich southern Georgia. Some people avoid cedar shavings, as its strong smell can irritate chickens’ sensitive respiratory systems.
The litter itself must be kept dry, so add more around watering containers as needed. One unusually rainy year in Southern California, where I live, caused runoff water to seep into our coop. The litter was too moist and got packed down. One of the most
important lessons of chicken keeping is that chickens don’t fare well in wet areas, so a total clean-out was in order.
In his book, Ussery offers solutions for deep litter that gets too dry and powdery, something we’ve also experienced. Some moisture is necessary to keep the beneficial microbes active and to avoid a dusty chicken house, which is also unhealthy for chickens.
Deep litter can be used in a run, or in part of the run, as well as inside the henhouse. If the method doesn’t appeal to you, you’ll need to keep the poop from building up. Otherwise, the ammonia that forms can lead to problems for your flock, including infectious bronchitis.
Aged to Perfection
Bonnie Jo Manion, co-author of Gardening with Free-Range Chickens for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, 2013) uses a manure box, a simple wooden structure filled with litter and topped with a wire mesh lid. The box sits beneath her chickens’ roost, and each morning, she skims the poop off the wire lid and litter. She also rakes the run daily (or less often when her chickens spend more time freeranging) and adds it to the compost bin.
If you don’t compost, consider putting chicken poop’s naturally high-nitrogen content to use other ways.
When used fresh, chicken manure burns plants, which is why Traci Torres, co-author of My Pet Chicken Handbook: Sensible advice and savvy answers for raising backyard chickens (Rodale, 2014) dumps wheelbarrows full of soiled litter on the poison ivy that grows too close to her house. You might try this in weedy areas, too.
You can also age the poop, if you have the space, by laying out a shallow layer of litter to dry. Most of us have at some point had a lovely country drive spoiled by the strong odor coming from large piles of poop at an industrial chicken or egg ranch. Dry poop doesn’t stink and attract flies like wet manure does. We spread a layer of chicken manure in fallow raised beds and till it in after a month or so. By the next growing season, the nitrogen has mellowed and the bed’s soil is enriched for heavy-feeding crops. Torres is currently aging chicken manure on a site she has slated for nitrogen-loving blueberries.
A fertilizer “tea,” can be made in a bucket filled with one-third poop and two-thirds water. Let the tea sit for two to four weeks, then strain (an old pillowcase works well).
Add one part poopy liquid to four parts water in a spray bottle, and use the diluted mixture as a foliar feed. Because of the possibility of pathogens in this fresh concoction, use extra care with food crops or only use on ornamental plants.
Some chicken keepers simply throw the poop away. However, check with your city’s
disposal company. They may prefer it be placed with other green materials, such as yard clippings and cut grass, so they can use it in their own composting endeavors.
Stay Clean
“Chickens are livestock,” Manion says, adding that without proper management their manure can be a vector for disease.
In addition to frequently raking out her coop and run, she also picks up the droppings in the high-traffic areas of her yard where the chickens have been free-ranging, as pet owners do for cats and dogs. Manure pits, as well as roosts, feeding dishes, nesting boxes and other items that come into contact with feces will need an occasional thorough cleaning, as well. Torres recommends a vinegar-and-water solution.
Having a dedicated pair of shoes you use only in the chicken coop is also a sensible idea that keeps poop in its place. Armed with knowledge, management practices and common sense, you may find that the fun of keeping chickens is more than collecting the eggs. In the poop, you may find magic.
Sheri McGregor writes and keeps chickens in rural San Diego County, Calif. You can find out more about her and her writing at sandiegohikes.com.