How to Process Chicken Manure
An average sized hen produces 1 cubic foot of manure every 6 months. This manure can sit around and stink up your chicken coop, or you can use to enrich your soil for healthy, high-yield plants. The oldest recipes for compost involve mixing animal manure with rotted hay for a nitrogen-rich blend that plants thrive in. Raw chicken manure can burn your plants at the roots if it is not first decomposed. However, once you process this manure by turning it into compost, it makes a highly useful soil amendment. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Chicken manure
- Chicken bedding (sawdust and straw)
- Shredded leaves
- Shredded newspaper
- Shovel
- Garden hose
- Compost thermometer
- Garden fork
Instructions
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1
Collect chicken bedding, shredded leaves and newspaper into an area where you will form a compost pile. These items are carbon-rich browns that will help the nitrogen rich chicken manure to break down faster.
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2
Layer chicken manure with the brown organic material to form a compost pile. Your compost pile should be approximately 5 feet wide by 5 feet deep by 5 feet high. A pile of this ratio will create hot compost and break down faster.
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3
Wet your pile so that it is the consistency of a wrung out sponge.
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4
Allow the compost pile to heat to an internal temperature of 130 to 150 degrees F. This temperature is hot enough to kill internal pathogens in your compost and to speed decomposition of the compost. Check this internal temperature using a compost thermometer.
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5
Turn the pile using a garden fork to keep the internal temperature high. To do this, bring the center material in the pile to the outer edges, and the outermost material to the center. The internal temperature should stay above 130 degrees F. You will need to turn the pile approximately every 3 days.
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Once every part of the pile has been heated for approximately 3 days, cover the pile and let it decompose naturally over a period of 60 days. This process is known as curing.
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Tips & Warnings
Most compost piles should be mixed at a ratio of 1 part carbon to 2 parts nitrogen. However, chicken manure is so powerful that you should mix a chicken manure pile at a ratio of 1:1 or even 2:1.
Never let your compost pile heat higher than 160 degrees F. A temperature this high can kill beneficial bacterial in the compost pile. To prevent this, only turn your compost pile when the internal temperature falls below 130 degrees F.
Chicken manure may contain pathogens that are harmful to humans. Always wear gloves when handling manure. Never spread compost on vegetables or root crops unless it has been properly aged. Always wash vegetables thoroughly before eating. For maximum precautions, never use compost made of manure on your edible garden.
