Chicken Chat - Composting

Our compost pile is not all that organized. I tried once but the chickens had other ideas. We now have a willy nilly system of adding to it frequently, chickens scratching through it everyday, me raking everything back into a semblance of a pile once or twice a week, and them promptly going through it again. Somehow with all the scratching and piling things breakdown and we end up with beautiful dark soil to add to the garden areas.

We throw anything that will breakdown in the pile. Kitchen scraps, coffee, weeds, grass clippings, and leaves. I was worried at first about putting onions and garlic out there, because I had heard they would make the eggs taste funny. However, we have never had an issue. I don’t think they eat them. An onion will roll out now and then and they don’t give it a second look. I also put eggshells in there but I crush them first at least to the point they don’t look like eggs anymore. They eat the shell bits for extra calcium.

Some people say their pile smells, I can’t say ours does. Sometimes on the really hot steamy days there is an aroma, that’s an indication perhaps that it is too wet or humid and this is when I will throw in some dry ingredients such as dead leaves. It’s just like controlling the aroma in the chicken run. If it fairly clean but smells there’s too much humidity, add some shavings. I will talk about the deep litter method for the covered chicken run another day. Aeration, breakdown by chicken, and lots of good bugs seem to work for us.