How to Garden With Chicken Manure

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.

Things You'll Need

• Manure scoop or snow shovel
• Wheelbarrow
• Compost heaps of organic materials
• Pitchfork
• Garden hose

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.

Tips & Warnings

• Top a field of clover, rye or some other green manure with a layer of chicken manure in the fall. Apply the chicken manure before the ground freezes and water it well. If you spread the manure on bare or frozen soil, you'll likely lose most of it to run-off in winter snowmelt.

• When using chicken manure on fruit or vegetable plants, take extra care to wash the produce well before you eat it.

• Chicken manure is too hot to be used raw on your flowers or vegetables. Always compost the manure first. If used without composting, manure could damage your plants' roots and possibly kill them.

References

• Seattle Tilth: Composting Chicken Manure
• University of California Cooperative Extension, Amador County: Raised Beds and Soil Mixes for Foothill Gardens
• National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service: Manures for Organic Crop Production