How to Compost with Chickens
I love my chickens. In addition to being cute and funny and providing tasty eggs, they also help in my garden. They eat weeds, invading pests, and kitchen scraps, and they turn that into compost I can use to provide nutrients for my garden soil. Some of the nutrients in the compost comes from their manure, but a lot comes from their constant scratching around breaking down the stuff they don’t eat. If you’re wishing you had unlimited access to fresh eggs and valuable compost, think about adding chickens to your backyard or farm. Once you have your coop set up, I can help you learn how to compost with chickens.
How Chickens Compost
To get a good compost pile going, you need the right mix of carbon and nitrogen, and you need to keep it aerated properly. You can do this yourself by carefully mixing the right amount of “browns” with your “greens” and turning it regularly. The better you get your compost conditions, the hotter your pile will get and the faster it will compost. Or you could take the easy way out like I do. You dump all your garden waste, lawn clippings, leaves, and sticks in your chicken coop. Add kitchen scraps and overripe garden produce and let the chickens do all the work.
Chickens love to scratch through leaves and dirt looking for seeds, bugs, or tasty scraps. They will aerate and mix your compost thoroughly in only a few days. Their droppings add nitrogen to the pile making it compost faster. Because your chickens will eat any bread, meat, fat or other kitchen scraps that might attract pests, your compost pile will be rodent free. In fact, if the rodents arrive, they had better watch out or the chickens will eat them too. As long as you keep enough dry materials like leaves, wood chips, dry weeds, or straw in the pile, your chicken compost should stay odor free. Also, no need to follow a strict schedule, you can add more materials whenever you have them. The chickens will mix it all together and enjoy the scratching time.
What Chickens will Eat
Chickens are omnivores who will eat just about anything. They don’t have much of a sense of smell or taste, so grains, meats, veggies and fruits that are unappetizing to us are just fine for them. There are certain foods that your chickens shouldn’t eat too much of – onion skins, apple seeds, avocado pits and peels, citrus peels, unripe tomatoes, green potatoes, etc. But in my experience, chickens do a pretty good job of avoiding the foods that don’t agree with them. If they were starving, maybe they would eat it, but if you are feeding them a reasonable ration of food, they just leave the unpalatable things to compost.
Chickens will eat every bug or invertebrate that they find and happily dig through to the bottom of the pile looking for more. Any invading garden pests you care to toss into their pen will be devoured as well. You can even let your chickens free range between your beds, but they will try to turn your garden into compost if you’re not careful with where you allow them to forage. They will eat some weed seeds, but if you have an invasive weed problem, don’t throw them in your chicken compost as it will likely not get hot enough to kill the weed seeds.
What Equipment You’ll Need
If you already have a chicken run, you will need little additional equipment. When you are ready to harvest your compost, just dig it out of the chicken area (or move a mobile coop). You can sift out the larger sticks and other uncomposted items. To make sure no pathogens get passed around, let your chicken compost age for at least three months before planting into it, and up to four months for plants that will be in direct contact with the soil. I like to clean out my coop and run in the fall to give my chickens a clean slate for the winter. The compost can sit on my garden beds all winter to age and finish composting.
If you don’t have chickens yet and only need a few laying hens, consider using a chicken tractor. These mobile coops can even be designed to be the size of one of your garden beds. Move your chicken tractor to a new bed whenever you’re done harvesting, or when they’ve finished composting one area. For a larger chicken setup, a coop with an enclosed run can work well. I made sure my chicken run has a full size door that I can wheel a wheelbarrow through to make it easier to bring materials in and compost out.
How to Get Started
If you already have chickens you may already feed them your kitchen scraps. To up your compost production, fill your coop and run with deep bedding like leaves, wood chips, or other organic materials. Once your chickens have had the chance to work on it for a while, scrape aside the top layers and scoop out the compost underneath. Keep adding to the pile to keep the composting going.
If you’re starting from scratch, decide how many chickens you want to keep and design your coop accordingly. Once you have your chickens settled in, start throwing in your scraps, weeds, garden castoffs and any other organic materials you can find. It may take some time to figure out how fast your chickens can work. If the coop is getting too wet or smelly, cut back on the scraps and increase the organic matter. If their area is getting too dry and not composting fast enough, add more scraps or wet organic material like grass clippings and let it work for a while. Good luck and happy composting with chickens!
Not ready to make the committment to chickens just yet? Maybe a worm bin is a better option for your space and time available. Check out my post on How to Compost with Worms for all the details!
Not sure what to do with all the wonderful compost your chickens are churning out? Turn it into healthy plants with my Mission: Healthy Plants mini-course. Everything you need to know to keep your plants healthy and thriving all the way to harvest time!
