Homegrown Fertilizer

In a post back on April 5th entitled a "foul smelling concoction", we described how we're turning weeds and garden waste into liquid fertilizer by inoculating with cow manure, rainwater and letting it ferment in 5 gallon buckets in the sun.  Homegrown fertilizer.  It has proven itself.  We've never had bigger, healthier, more productive yellow squash and zucchini!

We have another way that we produce homegrown fertilizer.  It's derived in our henhouse.  You might call it a "fowl" smelling concoction as well.  It is in the hen house where the chickens roost at night on roosting bars on the eastern wall.  You can see the sun filtering in from the western sky as I stand in the doorway.  Over time, the poop piles up underneath the place where they roost.

If you allow it to pile up, the henhouse has a strong ammonia smell.  It reminds me of how they describe bat guano in caves.  Every so often, in order to gather fertilizer AND to freshen up the aroma in there, I shovel the chicken litter into a wagon and pull to the garden.

On this particular afternoon I was able to fill two 30 gallon molasses tubs with composted litter.  I'll cover with a lid to keep it sealed off and dry.  If you look closely at it, in addition to chicken poop, there is straw and feathers mixed in as well.

Chicken litter is high in nitrogen and must be composted or cooled down for about four months until it is "cooled off" enough for use around plants to ensure that you don't burn the plants.  The tricky part of this is that most of the chicken manure in the tub is composted.  However, some of it on the top layer under the roost is fresh.  What I've always been able to do is to mix the litter thoroughly in order to incorporate the fresher manure with the composted manure and then either top dress or incorporate in the soil before planting.  It's an inexact science and it could (pardon the pun) burn me, but up to this point, it hasn't bothered the plants in the garden.

Free fertilizer made right here on our little farm.  It beats the pants off of buying it!

Black Gold

In my childhood each afternoon after school we'd gather around the television set and watch shows like Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, The Little Rascals, and The Beverly Hillbillies.  In the Beverly Hillbillies, Jed's life changed along with Ely Mae, Jethro, and Granny's when Jed shot and discovered Black Gold or Texas Tea. You know the rest of the story.  They loaded up their truck and they moved to Beverly... Hills, that is... Swimming pools, movie stars.

Striking oil on the property sure would make farming profitable, but as of yet we haven't struck the black gold that Jed Clampett did.  However, we have discovered another type of black gold in the chicken coop.  Chicken Poop!  Many of our hens roost in chicken tractors out in the pasture and fertilize the grass.  The others roost in the hen house and their poop litters the floor beneath the roosts.  It piles up and composts.

The lure of chicken manure

Each spring and fall when putting in the new garden, I harvest the black gold from beneath the roosts, shoveling it into our garden wagon.  It is full of nitrogen rich chicken manure along with feathers.  I pull this into the garden and work it into the soil on each row prior to planting and work it in real good.

A load from the chicken commode

Chicken manure, if not composted, can be real "hot" and can burn your plants, so you have to be careful when using it.  I make sure that I never put fresh poop around the plants in the garden, but I've found that if it has composted for months, it doesn't burn the plants.  To the contrary, they 'green up' and look really healthy after application.  I will even take a handful of the black gold and put it around the base of the bigger plants to allow the slow release down to the root level following rains or waterings.

Side-dressing the broccoli

After applying the chicken manure in the garden soil prior to planting or side dressing the older plants, I turn on the sprinklers and allow the water to wash over the plants and distribute the chicken fertilizer into the soil and roots.

Watering it in

I haven't bothered sending the chicken manure off for an analysis, but it seems to be just right. Fertility produced right on site is an added bonus and continues the cycle of animals living off the land, eating grass and bugs, returning fertility to the soil to replace what they've consumed and the fertility that the plants have taken from the soil in growth.  It is a nice cycle of giving and taking.  The "Black Gold" we have on our farm will likely never make us rich, and there aren't any swimming pools or movie stars around, but our black gold is helping to make our soil rich.

When Poop Doesn't Hit the Fan

People talk about what is going to happen when the poop hits the fan. What about when it hits the ground?  Now that we butchered 43 of our Cornish Cross birds and put them in the freezer, I was thinking about the differences between our egg layers and the meat birds.  The egg layers are pretty. The meat birds?  Not so much.  The laying hens follow you when it is feeding time and are somewhat polite and patient, but the meat birds clamor together like they are starving.  They eat food quickly, voraciously, even getting into the pvc gutter I use as a feed trough and then they sit and poop.  And then they sit in their poop. They are nasty animals.  This is why you must move the chicken tractors often.

As I was comparing the differences of the different breeds, something came to my attention: their poop!  If you've had your breakfast already and aren't afraid to discuss a smelly, unsightly topic, let's examine chicken poop.  I want to show you something odd that I noticed about the differences in chicken poop between breeds of birds.  Take a look at the photo below.

It looks like I spilled some of the 18% Protein Chick Grower that I feed the Cornish Cross meat birds - except it's not.  It is their poop.  Yes, the rain made it wet, but even on dry days, poop from the Cornish Cross meat birds looks like wet feed.  They eat SO MUCH and I know that Cornish Cross birds are extremely efficient in converting feed to meat, but that just looks like undigested feed to me. It looks like waste.  I don't like waste! And it's certainly not pretty (although it does make the grass grow green!)

Cornish Cross Chicken Poop

Then look at the chicken poop below.  This fine specimen came from one of our laying hens.  I didn't watch her make this 'deposit,' but it was either a Barred Rock, a Rhode Island Red, a Black Star, or an Aracauna.  Notice the difference.  You can actually see undigested feed in the poopy mess above, but not below.  The food has been fully digested and used by the hen.

See the 'white cap' on top?  Know what that is?  That is urate.  Chickens don't urinate like other animals do.  Their urinary waste is deposited in the poop in the digestive tract in the form of the white cap you see below - the urate.  I don't know, poop isn't pleasing to look at by any stretch of the imagination, but what you see below sure looks a lot better than the mess you see above.

Healthier looking poop from one of our laying hens

The huge amount of feed that a Cornish Cross eats, coupled with the fact that this animal doesn't forage very much or move around makes it critical that you push the chicken tractor each day, preferably a couple times a day, in order to get them on fresh grass and out of their poop.  The vast quantity of their poop can actually kill the grass.  It comes back, though, lush and green, like the grass growing over the septic tank that Erma Bombeck used to talk about.

On the other hand the laying hens roam freely over 3 acres, eating grass, bugs, worms, seeds, etc. all the while distributing their healthier looking poop all over the pasture.  They may not have the genetic make-up of the Cornish Cross, allowing them to quickly convert feed to meat, but they do what they do best - lay beautiful eggs.  The life of a Cornish Cross is over at 10 weeks.  In contrast, a good laying hen will continue to be productive laying eggs for our family for years!

Each chicken does what they do best.  I guess I'm partial to the more natural, beautiful laying hens.