About animal droppings

[daileyjoy]

Those of you who have goats, pigs, chickens ect.... what do you do with the stuff you clean out of their pens? Do you compost it, could it be added to a humunure pile, or perhaps worms bins outside the pens to dump it all into and be composted that way.

Jennifer

[HarleysMom]

I just dump it all in a big pile near the garden and when it has aged some I use it in the garden.

[Sarah J]

I second that. My manure pile created the BEST garden mulch this year. Every time we clean out the goat/chicken/rabbit/calf pens the chickens go nuts in it, scratching and pecking like they've never seen the pile before. And the next year it goes onto the garden. We swap sides each time so we know where the older stuff is each time.

But we definitely compost it.

Sarah

[CJ]

I garden directly in it, or compost it, or add it to my flower beds, wherever it's needed most.

[BamaSuzy]

we have chickens in fenced area on one side one year and the other side the next, alternating chickens with the garden. We just dump all the goat and rabbit manure directly onto what will be that year's garden and till it in....or if it's early we let the chickens till it in for us....I don't have time for compost piles as such. And we have some HUGE healthy vegetables!

[daileyjoy]

what do you use as a covering. What about flies?

[Cyngbaeld]

If the chickens are allowed to dig in it, they will eat any maggots. It really decreases the numbers of flies.

[Ana Bluebird]

Yep, not too much "fertilizer" goes to waste around here: either goes directly into the flower beds or garden or into the compost pile or sometimes I give it to the chickens if it's got bedding in it (like straw) for their scratching fun. Every year I make many trips to a friend's barn to get his composted cattle poop as he has so much extra. It's great stuff. I've even got my neighbors asking to go get some of his poop.

[Jen H]

I put the poop directly on the garden beds I'll be using next year. I rotate my vegetable beds every year, so by next year the poop will be broken down and the soil will be nice and fertile.

What doesn't get spread directly in the garden gets composted and spread between the rows in the apple orchard.

[MaKettle]

Compost it. I've got bins made of old pallets, and toss the barn sweeping in one during the winter. Also the compostable kitchen waste. In the summer the winter pile is covered with a layer of hay, and the summer pile started. It is mostly pony poop from the barnyard layered with kitchen waste, and then covered with shredded paper every four-six inches. Paper keeps the smells/flies down--friend saves her shreddings for me--and it decomposes beautifully. Dumping the soiled water from the buckets into the piles keeps it moist so composting is speeded.The poultry sweepings are pretty strong, even mixed with gobs of bedding, and that goes out to the flower and veg. gardens. New beds are covered with newspaper and loaded down with this marvelous stuff that burns out anything growing beneath it, then mellows and is ready for planting by spring. Am also widening a bed by piling a one foot wide row litter along the border to burn out the grass, and will repeat until the target area is expanded by two feet width. Not ever being in close proximity of pigs, can't say, but would suppose composting with lots of litter would keep smells at bay.