When you ’re a gardener , a nice welfare of raising a deal of backyard chickens — in plus to the delicious bracing eggs they lay — is all the superbly nitrogen - racy manure they produce , which can conduct to swell compost . Believe it or not , the average hen eject almost 2 pounds of manure a week . Because chickens deplete a dieting gamey in Ca to insure stiff eggshells , their manure incorporate gamey amounts of calcium than manure from other livestock specie .
Using chicken manure as compost ormulchfor your garden is simple and effective . ( See “ Standard Composting ” below . ) However , there ’s another way to incorporate the composted manure into your garden all time of year long : Brew up a batch of chicken ninny tea . This simple method of making homemade liquid fertilizer adds nutrient to your garden soil just like compost does , but the swimming form make it commodious to give a targeted boost to specific plant during the growing season . seedling and new transplants in particular benefit from a Cupid’s itch of the nutrient - dense teatime .
Make Your Own
You ’ll never buy commercial-grade fertiliser again once you start making your own , which is more economical and much unspoilt for your volaille , your family and the environment .
Because raw poultry manure has high concentrations of bacteria , you should never utilise it directly to your edible garden , as it could make the consumer of the produce sick . The excessive available nitrogen in the raw manure can also burn the plant and cause them to die . So when you make clean out your coop , especially when you ’re scraping the poop off the roost streak , define some away to expend for your afternoon tea . You ’ll need a good - size of it bucketful fill with composted chicken manure , so start accumulate . It ’s ok if a minute of bedding material is mix into the manure , but seek to scrape just the manure into your pail as much as possible .
To properly compost your collect chicken manure for the garden , see the Poultry Science column “ Compost Chicken Manure the Right manner . ” Once your supply of composted chicken manure has heal for a minimum of 80 days , you ’re ready to bulge have your compost tea .
First , you will involve a large credit card container : A chalk can , large bucketful , pail or plastic tote all work great . Next you ’ll need to make a “ afternoon tea bag ” for the composted crybaby manure . I use old cotton fiber pillowcases . Pick one up at your local thrift store if you do n’t have any on hand .
Add your composted chicken manure to the pillowcase until it ’s 1/3 of the mode full . link up a while of string , baling twine or clothesline around the neck of the pillowcase near the top , leaving prospicient final stage informal that you ’ll be capable to snaffle subsequently , and then set it in the large plastic pail or trash can that leave behind some way for water .
Speaking of water system , add about twice as much in volume as the pillowcase cognitive content , ensuring that you overlay the pillowcase and its contents totally .
get out the top of the pillow grammatical case or the ends of the twine or clothesline hang over the side of the bucket so you may snaffle them easily , congeal the pail uncovered in a sunny position outside . You will need to keep usher in oxygen to the solution so pathogen and bad bacterium wo n’t grow . you could easily do this by dunk the case up and down a few times a twenty-four hour period to excite the water and pillowcase contents . Make certain the case is always left fully submerged .
In about two calendar week , the liquid should have film on a deep , plenteous , tawny-brown brown color resembling iced tea leaf . cautiously remove the slip from the pail , toss away the solid contents from the pillowcase into your regular compost nap , and chuck the pillow slip in the trash . ( you’re able to also wash it for reuse , although I prefer to just go purchase another one at the parsimony shop . ) At this point , your compost tea is done .
you may leave it in the plastic pailful , but before you use it , you will need to thin out the liquidness , one part afternoon tea to four parts H2O , so if you have way in the container , go onwards and tally enough water to cut the Camellia sinensis .
If you need a larger container , a plastic ice can works great . you may broadly speaking handle it once it ’s diluted or just store it in a covered area . If you do n’t get much rain , simply forget it out in the yard .
Serving Your Compost Tea
To apply the chicken poop afternoon tea , stream some into a watering can , or habituate a sprayer attachment on your hosepipe , then use it to your plants . Because of the potential for pathogens and the hazard of burning attendant leave , water around the plant roots only , not directly on the heyday or fruit of the plants themselves , especially obviate folio you will be consuming , such as spinach , kale , loot and other putting surface . It ’s also recommend that you do n’t hold the volaille poop teatime toroot harvest — beets , Daucus carota sativa , white potato vine , sweet potato , parsnips — to reduce chance of pollution . As always , wash away your hands well after each use .
I like to give my seedling a ripe lachrymation right after I graft them , and then give them another alimentation boost each week for the first several weeks . The atomic number 7 - rich raw plant food is especially beneficial to plants as they ’re grow their leaves : It assist in photosynthesis and prevents yellow , sickly flora . you’re able to also water your instal plants once a week with this fluid fertiliser .
I hope you ’ll sample your hand at brewing some chicken poop Camellia sinensis for your garden this spring . Your works will love it , and you ’ll begin to revalue your chickens ’ poop instead of looking at cleaning out your chicken coop as a dire task . There ’s a reason why nurseryman call livestock manure “ contraband gold , ” and chicken poop tea is most decidedly fluid gold !
Standard Composting
Plants , such as tomatoes , peppers and eggplant , benefit from having calcium added to the soil in which they ’re grow , so if you ’re planning on planting any of those crops , incorporating a second of chicken manure into your soil will be extremely beneficial , as will lend some crushed shell into the holes you moil for your seedling . In fact , impart calcium can help foreclose heyday close rot , a plebeian affliction of calcium-loving plants . Chicken manure is also extremely high in nitrogen , and all industrial plant need nitrogen to spring up nice green leaves and stems , so get that crybaby manure working in your garden !
When you clean out your chicken coop in the late summertime and fall , rake the soiledbedding — straw or shavings plus all the chicken poop and feathers — onto your garden secret plan and use it as mulch over the winter to slow down the increase of weed , help keep back soil moisture and provide nutrients and structure to the soil . The timing of the software will allow the bedding disintegrate and wreak its way into the garden territory by give .
Even more significantly , because the nitrogen in the volaille manure is “ red-hot ” and can burn up plants if you apply it too shortly , waiting several month before planting it will give up the N levels to decline , while also giving the various pathogens and bacteria present in the manure time to scatter . When you clean out your hencoop during the grow season , it ’s best to start a compost good deal or add the cage bedding to your existing compost pile and not apply it directly to your garden while plants are growing in it .
This clause appear in the May / June 2017 issue ofChickens .
