Chicken Compost - Designing the System

we've been raising chickens for three years now and almost entirely on compost that we get some local organic sources and for grain that we barter with local organic farms our chickens cost us about one penny per day per bird on average maybe a tiny bit more but not much we get really high quality eggs and we get about four wheelbarrow loads of compost per week that comes out of the system what I would love to do in this video share after three years of experimenting with this what sort of tools techniques and design considerations have gone into play that makes this work really well for us I'll admit I would say we're still completely novice in a lot of ways but maybe there are some ideas here that are useful to you and hopefully you can get something out of it so let's look at this system and explore some of the design and tools that are involved in this so one thing that you'll notice as you look in this space is or maybe you'll notice this is that we have basically a flow pattern it's a nutrient flow pattern and what we've tried to do is design it where raw incoming food scraps begin in one day and you'll notice there's a technique here that I'm using this incredibly low-tech really easy to replicate I'm using locusts you could use oh don't use pressure-treated but some sort of good hardwoods and these are boards that aren't useful for other projects but they've got really nice strong feet with screws into them out exterior-grade screws these are great for making dividers for different sections and so the raw compost comes into the first bay it's mixed with charcoal to soak up excess nutrient and odor and so the chickens can start breaking down the charcoal and incorporating it if you're interested in making your own charcoal I'll link here to Thailand where we talk about making biochar or charcoal in wood stove outside whatever we won't get into that now but charcoal and raw ingredients come in as they work on this I use a 5-time strong Hayfork sometimes these are called manure forks this is my preferred tool of choice and I get under the material I lift it and I turn it always moving to the next section to the next section to the next section so raw gets turn turn turn so that there's space for the new raw material to come in at a certain point here we add some grain to it to have the grain be able to sprout and I'm going to call us here and we'll take a closer look at that so we've got our main area where we're putting in the raw food scraps turning it turning it turning it moving it closer and closer to the finished area and again you can see each time I turn it I move it further along and it'll be going from here into the primary finishing area and then the true finishing area is that last one we just cleared that out recently but we have a secondary waste stream coming in this may or may not be interesting or useful for your situation but in this case we're putting in all of the weeds the garden scraps things that have lots of feed load etc you can see right now in fact I just mowed the lawn tonight with a push mower they love getting nice fresh salad from the lawn and so these raw ingredients come in at the top of this area and you'll notice that it's positioned so that gravity brings the material down so each time I turned this a little bit I'm aiming it further and further down slope may seem that I'm being rude and just throwing it on the chicken but I've learned that they really hold room so I just throw it gently and they figure it out and you can see that what's happening here is we've got hay and wood chips and feeds that we've been collecting and then I'm also adding in whole wheat seeds corn seeds millet sunflower that's where our expense comes in is millet and sunflower seed the rest of these we barter for and so the lawn clippings the weeds from the garden the stalks the food scraps the hay and the wood chips all converge to start creating heat this is actually pretty warm and it sprouts the seed so it's basically a conveyor belt of tumbling organic matter going down float and each time I turn it they get nor the sprouted seeds out of it you'll see the last pile when I go to turn that it still has some sprout so it keeps them interested we turned it enough times that's hopefully they finished those sprouts but then we know that when that leaves the guard leaves from here into the garden we can expect some weeds to germinate so the first season we try to transplant it in mulch it heavily I'll cut away to some shots of what those garden beds look like we get four wheelbarrow loads of it a week we're paying a cent a day per bird for the systems working really beautiful for us so hopefully some of these basic work logs and ideas are interesting to you and I will cut away to the last shot here of turning the last second-to-last compost Bay so this is the second to last day and you can see there's still sprouts in fact that's what they're mainly interested in and this is basically from that last shot where you saw the raw garden weeds and lawn clippings etc to this point is about three weeks it's really fast and one thing you'll notice is that when I use the hay fork or this manure fork what I never do is from up high poke it down in three years have never poked a chicken mouth on wood but what I found is that if I take it and I touched the material and once it's on there I can then push in I'll never hurt a bird and I'll just keep faking this and flipping it piling it up and letting them pick it apart once it seems like it's drought free it'll go to the final day one has been here for a while it'll go into the wheelbarrow and go up to the gardens to generate food for us and so that's how our chickens are the part of this engine of fertility production while feeding us hopefully this is useful to you and some little tidbits of work thanks for watching they like the sprouts

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Views: 225,793

Rating: 4.9546108 out of 5

Keywords: permaculture, garden, compost, organic, chicken tractor, gardening, chickens, chicken (animal), permaculture (website category), compost (material), chicken, sustainable, organic gardening, how to make compost, chicken house, garden (industry), permaculture chickens, permaculture gardening, chicken coop, vegetable garden, farm, gardens, composting, design, farming, backyard chickens, water, outdoor, edible acres, edibleacres, vermont composting, compost chickens, chickens compost

Id: Pe6M9CkvKEU

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/VeloKvlt]

I will never not upvote your stuff. Thanks for the wealth of information!

[u/D3M4NNU]

Your videos are as enjoyable to watch as the primitive technology guy. Great job.

[u/Mr_Zero]

This guy is doing the same thing using wheel loaders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWChH9MHkHg Good to see people coming to the same conclusion.