How to Make Chicken Manure Compost | Best Nitrogen Manure Source

Did you know that chicken manure is one of the richest in nitrogen of all the compost? I'm going to show you the steps to make it. Chicken compost is also really high in nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. It also has sulfur and it has a lot of micronutrients and it has a great ability to build that organic matter in your garden soils. This chicken manure right here was just cleaned out of the chicken coop and so we never want to apply this directly to plants because it is considered fresh and it's super hot and it'll burn your plants. I make my chicken manure compost in these bins right here. You can use pallets for making bins. You can do it on the open ground too. That works well and then you can use a tarp too which is what we're going to use for this video just for the ease of it. Okay so I've been making compost for over 35 years and I can honestly tell you I never get sick of it. I love making compost and this is the best method that I've done for getting that compost to break down really fast. So we've got our tarp and we've got our poo and we're just going to dump a little bit down and hopefully not get the kitty cat. Okay so we're going to put a little bit on this tarp, not too much at a time. All right one thing that I want you to really notice here is chicken manure when it's dry has a tendency to repel water and repel it pretty bad. So if I were just to sprinkle over the top of this which we have to have wet or moisture for compost, you'll see down in here it's completely dry underneath. It doesn't soak it, it totally repels it off. So we have to put some water kind of mix it up but what I've really found that works really good is to add some other organic matter. Something like grass clippings is great to add to this. I've even got some hay and goat poop which gives us some more nitrogen. These are all really good just to kind of mix in and layer and so that's what we'll do. We'll add these, we'll water, we'll mix and we'll just continue to layer. As we continue to water and mound this up I thought I'd also mention that on the floor of our chicken coop we also add zeolite which is minerals and then we add coffee grounds to the bottom of it too. This just helps with that foul smell that you might get in the chicken coop so that it just tames it right down and then it just makes it a much sweeter smell. Then you get the benefits of that being put in your compost as well. The size that you really want to have your compost is no smaller than a 3x3x3. That way it breaks down much better. Larger is even better and even a 5x5x5 is actually really good but remember the bigger it gets the harder it is to turn. So manageable 3x3x3. Now this is what's cool about a tarp is you can actually create turning with the tarp. See how that just turns it? It's still pretty dry and so we're going to add more water to this so we can just tug on this tarp and it just pulls it right over onto itself. Okay we want to make sure that this is all moist. If we have any dry pockets they're not going to break down. Now one thing is if you live in an area that gets a lot of rainfall then you're going to want to put a tarp over the top of it because while you've already got it moist the rain is going to cause all those nutrients to leach out plus it's going to get super soggy and then when it's soggy it gets really smelly. So also when you're in a hot environment you're going to want to put a tarp over it just to keep the moisture in or it's going to dry out so fast that then again it's not going to break down. So we're still just a little bit dry almost there. Okay we got all of our ingredients mixed together our chicken manure and everything else and we've got enough water added to it just like it's the consistency of a wrung out sponge. It's not too dry and it's definitely not soggy and so I would suggest getting one of these thermometers. They've got a nice long probe they're a compost thermometer and that way you can check the temperature of it and then you'll know when it's ready. You'll also know if it's killing off those nasty pathogens that sometimes can be carried in chicken manure. So we want to look for the degrees of 145 to 155 that's the best temperature to be able to kill these pathogens. So once the temperatures don't come up anymore that's a good indication that you're getting close as well as color. So once you start getting that nice dark rich color and it just falls apart you know we're getting close but if you have a little bit of a smell there that's still a little ammonia then let it go a little bit longer but it should smell just like nice clean earth. Okay so this compost has been sitting here for 24 hours and as you can see it has decreased in size by about a third and you can just feel the warmth of it. As soon as I pulled that tarp off you can feel the heat coming right off and I want to check the temperature to make sure that it's heating up because if it's not I need to do something maybe add some blood meal or cotton seed meal to the mix or maybe even just more water. And so right now it's 130 degrees so we're right on target. It's heating up really good and at this rate it should be ready in about three weeks but always check to make sure you know the other signs that we talked about to make sure that it is dark and that it doesn't have a smell to it and that it's not heating up anymore. So I'll come back here I will turn this about every three days to keep it heating up and at that time I'll probably add a little bit more water because it'll dry out because we're still pretty warm here. One of the awesome things about the chicken manure is it really helps plants uptake the phosphorus especially in alkalized soils and at the rate that you'll be putting this is about a half of an inch to an inch around the base of your plants and in your garden soils. It's really rich you don't need a whole lot a little bit goes a long way. I hope you love making compost as much as I do so get those chickens to work laying their eggs pooping and get to making your compost. Till next time we'll see ya. Fresh chicken manure contains 0.6 nitrogen 0.5 phosphorus and 1.5 in potassium. Hey wait and each chicken can lay up to 11 pounds of chicken manure in a month. That's a lot of poop. Do you got your calculator?