The single most bestest thing you can do with those leaves and that chicken manure is to compost them. Spreading the litter from the house onto the garden now will still allow many of the nutrients in that manure to disperse into the atmosphere. Tilling soil disrupts the life of the Soil Food Web so much that any benefits from tilling are eliminated by that disruption and it takes months for the SFW to restore itself. Making compost and spreading it on the garden and not tilling will do more to build a good, healthy soil for you than anything else you can do.

My soil is actually pretty great now, nice and crumbly easy to dig, not much clay, but I just really wanted to find something to do with the poo besides throwing it in a pile in the back of the yard. I will start a compost pile next time I clean out the coops, How would you reccomend to do this, a layer of leaves, a little coffee grounds, a layer of poo till the bin is filled up or would that be too much poo?
ohiochickenchic

I think your plan sounds good. Chicken manure is pretty high in nitrogen, and coffee grounds are also a nitrogen source, so you may want to make the leaf layers a little thicker. If you have enough straw mixed in, that could offset the nitrogen pretty well, too.

My rule of thumb is that if the compost starts to stink, you need to add more carbon (like the leaves) and/or get more air in and/or let it dry out a bit. If it's not heating up enough, you need to add more nitrogen, get more air in, or adjust the moisture. In the winter, you may not have much luck in getting hot compost going anyway, but with the chicken manure, you might be able to get it to heat up.

It will work fine. Till the compost in a few weeks before plant out and the soil ife will restratify just fine and benefit from the additional OM.

The single best on line tutorial on composting I have found is linked below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Florida on line composting

Agreed that the highest and best use is to compost it first. However, if you find yourself with a LOT of litter/poop to get rid of this winter (and 50 chickens can certainly generate a lot of poop), then the other thing you can do is to put it out now on top of the beds. What will happen is that you will indeed lose a little of the nitrogen, but that's probably OK. Much of the nitrogen that is left will work its way into the soil in early spring, which is when nitrogen is often in short supply. By planting time, you'll have partly decomposed straw left, which makes excellent mulch. Simply pull the straw aside and transplant or seed, then push the straw back in place when the seedlings are up. Thus you have not only enriched your soil at the time when it needs it most, you have also added a layer of mulch, which is equally important.

Anyway, that's what I do. My compost bins have been full for 2 months already, so when I clean the coop this weekend it's all going right on the garden beds.

-Diggity

I've had my coop for about 13 years. Every fall, after my garden clean-up, I do the big coop clean-up and all the 'stuff' -poop, bedding, uneaten, buried feed- is layered onto my gardens. By Spring the heat of it is gone and the area is ready to plant, whether you till or layer. On perenniel beds, just be careful to go lightly and keep it away from the crowns of plants.

One thing I have learned is that shredded paper from bills and such make the best chicken bedding. The cross cut being better than the long cuts. The paper is more absorbent and breaks down faster than straw or sawdust. Not to mention being a fitting end for junk mail.

I tried composting a few times but the fact is, chickens are the best, most efficient composting method I have found. They eat anything. And I do mean anything. It is perfectly OK to give 20 chickens the small amount of cooked meat scraps that an average family produces - including bones, and yes, chicken. Even things like orange peals, peach pits, etc. that they really don't eat, go into the coop because between all the scratching and the poop, things break down amazingly fast.

Kay.

dont put meat or bones in the coop they can rot and make a huge mess for you to clean up and possibly contaminate your eggs/chickens with salmonella then you cant sell your eggs no point in doing that just a waste of money best option is to get/make a compost tumbler they can compost very fast and make great compost and you dont have to deal with those brown/ green layers in a pile cause its just going to get mixed up anyways
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