No idea. But given the really rough time you've had I'd just do the easiest thing. Dump it in a corner with leaves and walk away. It'll work given sufficient moisture.

There is a saying......compost happens. It is a natural process that requires NO human intervention. Us going through the layering, balancing greens and browns and turning, etc. are only intended to speed up the process but not a requirement for it happening.

Like floral says, just pile the chicken poo and anything else you can get your hands on in a corner and wait.

Compost happens

Just throwing it in a pile and waiting over the winter is the only way I have ever composted. I have not had chickens, they are not allowed on my size lot, but the chicken stuff would work like anything else.

I agree with others in doing it the easy way and may you find peace and comfort with tending your late wife's flock.

What a wonderful post, central_valley.

I've certainly dealt with that sort of thing - not chicken poo(p), but sheep poo(p). I used to swap some plants with a man who managed a local sheep station (now, sadly, houses and streets instead of paddocks and sheep - the good things in life. Used to love going there and scraping out his sheep yard on the few occasions I went there.

Anyhow, I can't remember what I did with my trailer loads of the stuff - it's too long ago, but if i were dealing with your chicken's scrapings I'd take the easy road because it's less dusty. I think I'd just make yet another heap with it, cover with autumn leaves, and let the stuff all rot down over time. Eventually the rain will wet what needs to be wetted.

You can lay it down now as a nourishing mulch under a shrub or plant you like---in sheets or chunks. Don't pile it too thickly as it's probably rain impenetrable at this dense stage. I'm assuming this hard pack manure is somewhat aged.

Central_Valley, I'm sorry for your loss. That was a sweet tribute to read. I can well imagine how overwhelmed you have become.

I have owned chickens and I compost. For a long time, I cleaned out my houses and either layered the manure in a compost pile or piled it aside for later compost pile additions. I later heard about a method of litter management that I embraced. That's a method called Deep Litter Henhouse management. You'd need to have at least five or six chickens to make it work well. You're basically moving your compost operation into your henhouse and cleaning ithe house out semi-annually instead of twice monthly. I'd tell you more if the method would work for you.

You can take your new trailer to your local leaf dump and get some lovely bedding for your chickens.

Central_valley, how are you faring?

@annpat, I just caught up on the many comments since a week or so after my original post. Thank you all for your good wishes.

I did what several people recommended: I started a new pile mixing compost with leaves (no need to import them, I get plenty of my own) and added water. I broke up the sheets of chicken poo into chunks, as much as I could, with a spade. A week or so later I turned the pile. Then the winter rains started, making it too soggy to turn.

I arranged some cinder blocks facing into a retaining wall that volunteered for this job, so my new compost pile is actually something like a compost bin. It's not full, but I'm dumping kitchen scraps (non-meat) and more leaves at the other end, and when the weather dries out around March, I'll turn that pile too.

My compost will still be frozen solid in March. I thought of you recently because I just bought an ev and wondered if you still had yours.

... because I just bought an ev and wondered if you still had yours.

I do indeed. Based on the length of time I owned my last car, I expect to have it until I have to give up driving... although I might trade it for something sportier than an SUV if I ever have to give up my current large property.

I did have a remarkable experience late last year where a guy in a big old all-metal pickup backed into me in a parking lot and cracked the front bumper. Oops, it's not a bumper; it's a bumper cover. I've looked at a parts diagram, and there's nothing called a "bumper" underneath it. But there must be Faberge eggs and Lalique glass under there, because it cost about $6700 to repair the damage. My insurance company paid all but $500 of that, and I'll get the $500 back if they can recover it from the other guy's insurance company. When Santa brings halva and kunafa in his sack.

Oh, I wish Santa brought me kunafa! It looks delicious. Now I'm bummed this morning about all the things I don't know about!

I'm going to buy a self-driving ev when I get dementia someday. That will probably be my last car unless someone reminds me.

A bit more update. I think I've mentioned that winter is the rainy season here. On top of that, I realized that my new heat pump HVAC's compressor gets cold when it's heating the house, and creates a steady stream of condensation. Part of it was running back into the house's foundation, because the concrete patio isn't sloped properly, and the rest was flowing across the patio and right into the chicken coop.

So the ground inside the coop has been a muddy, poopy swamp ever since the weather got cold, rain or no rain.

Last week I had my contractor construct a drain from the point where the condensation is heaviest to a drain pipe that runs the length of the property and behind the coop. It looks like the water traps you often see in front of a garage door where the driveway slopes down so there's no way to direct the water away from the door. The weather service is promising us a week or more of dry weather, so next weekend I'm going to scrape out the coop as much as I reasonably can and lay down fresh leaves. The scrapings will go on the compost pile, of course.

You still have two chickens?

My house is on a steep hill and has a lake- and garden-facing daylight basement which is my preferred living space---it having the best views. I'd barely started a new garden lake-side on the construction fill around the new basement addition when it finally occured to me that all the rains and snow melts carry my gardens' nutrients straight into the lake. I moved all my compost piles to the roadside part of the property, two hundred feet from the lake and I stopped amending my garden with anything except compost mulches and poop from the worms that love a compost mulch

...which is all still too rich to be lakeside, so I decided that I shouldn't plant anything frivolous in that space---just bird-friendly native plants (winterberry and elderberry so far) and vegetables. That was supposed to justify the use of compost. That didn't last very long, though, because I love so many non-native flowers and the plot is too shady to grow many vegetables.. I went back to growing frivolous stuff, but I put a row of hay bales between the garden and the lake. I'm sure neighbors boating by think, "What an interesting way to landscape a yard." My own cousin questioned the roadside location of my compost and leaf bag operation this fall---a verge where most of my neighbors have lawn.

One of my Garden Web friends has built a small stream on her property in Michigan. The noise of the "brook" makes it worth it alone as a garden feature, but she's planted stream-loving plants around it and it looks very natural. I sent her a pink granite stone from Acadia to disrupt the stream's flow and make her think of me.

You need a stream is where I've been going.

My new car:

Invited or uninvited passengers?

Field mice ?

Very uninvited. Deer mice. The night previous when I let the dog out, I thought I saw somethiing jumping from headrest to headrest, but figured I had to be imagining it.. They were sound asleep the next morniing, waking around 10:00 am when I opened the door.

@annpat Two chickens--I'm puzzled where that came from. I can't find any relevant instances of "two" on the page. For the record, there are six chickens. One is retired, the others are probably going to start laying again within a week or two.

The interior of your EV looks an awful lot like the interior of my EV. Except for the wildlife. Mine didn't come with that option. It's a Kia EV6 GT-Line. (A lot of people see "GT" and think "muscle car." There is an EV6 GT, but the GT-Line is not that, except to the extent that any EV is a muscle car.) It's the model that has a retractable moon roof, a feature I insist upon. Open the moon roof a crack on the freeway in summer, and forge about air conditioning.

I'm sick about mine really. I thought I was going to get some wicked deal, so I just went with the car on the lot. Hyundai dropped their EV prices immediatley after I bought mine, and for the price I paid for my base model (Why anyone let me buy a car by myself, I do not know.) I could now get a moonroof, a heated steering wheel, the gorgeous Digital Teal color and other stuff. My car is the color of putty and has no options.

Regarding the two chickens, you wrote this and I didn't realize you had four more chickens in a different coop. "I expect I can clean out most of the remaining space just as easily over the next few weeks. The only challenge will be a second coop that's too small to climb into. I'll have to remove the chickens (two) and tilt the coop onto its side to clean it. The chickens aren't used to being handled, so will be... interesting."

"Muscle car"--- I'll say! I'm going to end up in jail if I don't stop flooring it off traffic lights. (60 mph in 4.4 seconds).

Sorry to hear about your "deal." Yes, it always pays to check market prices before you buy. I bought a used car online, so my price comparisons were kind of baked into the shopping experience. I never bought a used car as a primary vehicle before, but I've been very happy with it. (Did I already say that?...)

I drive with the proverbial egg on the accelerator (not the reason I have chickens), but on the rare occasions when I need to be aggressive, the acceleration is a rush.

I walked away twice, but when the prices dropped a month later, I bought it. The prices immediately started dropping more. A 2026 now costs less than my 2025.

I didn't want to die without owning an EV, but now I'm planning to live long enough to own a self-driving car. I'm going to say, "Car, get me the heck away from this big house where I and people in rolling chairs are kept against our will."