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"Draw your own conclusions, but draw them in pencil so you can change them again later."
-- Douglas Black
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James 1:19-20
Not all those who wander are lost - J. R. R. Tolkien
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It's never too late to start! I retired to homestead on the slopes of Mauna Loa, an active volcano. I relate snippets of my endeavor on my blog : www.kaufarmer.blogspot.com
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Zone 9b
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Nick & Jane
You are most welcome to visit our blog at ALEKOVO.COM.
Kevin Schaible wrote:
The last few years I have dabbled with using the litter on my garden with fantastic results. The first year I put some on a raised bed in October and planted like I always did in the spring. I live in Missouri and our rocky clay soil is horrible. I had it tested and the report said the soil was deficient for planting in almost every way. I planted from seed and in my tomatoes I saw these leaves that were not like tomato leaves, they were huge and I assumed they were weeds. After pulling a few I noticed they looked like tomatoes but enormous tomato plants. I let them go and didn't add anything else to the soil. The plants grew like weeds and I even got a leaf that was 11 inches long. I couldn't believe how big the plants were. I had a farm hand at the time that didn't know how to shut a gate and the goats got in and ate all the leaves off the tomatoes twice and really crippled the plants.
Last year I decided to see what would happen if I put a half cup of litter in the ground at planting. I used walmart plants that were about 6 inches high with the magic chicken poo. My brother in law planted a garden and challenged me to a tomato grow off. We tracked our progress every friday. After the first 2 weeks my plants averaged 1 foot of growth per week. They quickly outgrew the cages and at 8 weeks were taken out by a storm. I still got a few 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes from the twisted plants but they clearly didn't reach their potential. My rhubarb hadn't done anything so I put some magic poo on that too. I had a leaf that was 5 feet long. The leaves were dark green and huge. My corn grew 3 stalks out of every seed along with most of them having 3 ears as well. My cilantro went to bolted and went to seed almost immediately after planting. The plants were about 3 feet tall. The cilantro re-seeded itself and started growing in november. It was about 5 inches high during superbowl weekend. By the first of may it was about 38 inches tall and went to seed again.
This year I just planted again and hope to have a well documented account of my garden again. Is anyone else doing this kind of stuff with chicken litter?
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Nate Groshek wrote:
Kevin,
I have a 5x7 coop doing the deep litter method as well. A local woodworker has been providing me a couple garbage bags every few weeks which works out nicely.
Did you wait for this to break down, or just spread the litter as is?? I have woodchip-mulched (back to Eden method) raised beds. They're doing okay right now, but i'd love to amend them with on-site nutrients rather than buying fertilizer/manure.
A build too cool to miss:Mike's GreenhouseA great example:Joseph's Garden
All the soil info you'll ever need:
Redhawk's excellent soil-building series
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Living free starts with understanding ones own emotions and emotion affects and controls us.
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Check out my newest project at http://www.stadtfarm.com http://www.twitter.com/stadtfarms or https://www.facebook.com/StadtFarm/
Kevin Schaible wrote: This year I just planted again and hope to have a well documented account of my garden again. Is anyone else doing this kind of stuff with chicken litter?
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Priscilla Stilwell wrote:My rabbit/chicken house is nearly finished, and I'll be doing something similar. I'm going to lay blocks around the inside of the dirt floor, and fill with local sand (which also has some clay in it). Then I'll put in a thin layer of sawdust and shavings along with a sprinkling of charcoal powder. Bunnies in suspended cages will shower poo, pee, and food scraps down to the chicks below them who will then scratch and poop and pee and do their chickeny thing. Whenever needed, I'll add more sawdust, and periodically, some more charcoal powder.
Hi Priscilla, what is the charcoal powder for?
The house is 16x12, and we're only starting with 2 or 3 buns and 4 hens. But assuming all works out, we will likely expand fairly quickly (if the bunnies have their say!). I assume at the beginning we will be able to go almost a year before cleaning it out. Once it's at capacity, it will fill much faster.
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Kevin Schaible wrote:The one thing I always hated about keeping chickens was coop cleaning. It stunk, I needed to do it every couple of weeks, it was hard work since I had a 10 x 20 coop with several hundred chickens at the time.
I liked the idea of deep litter but the litter didn't work as well as I would have liked using the typical methods of trying to emulate the forest floor or compost pile in the coop. The biggest problem was the moisture that compost and the forest needs to break down manure. Moisture creates an anaerobic system that leads to ammonia buildup, manure buildup and cleaning or adding material on a regular basis.
I stumbled on Korean Natural Farming deep litter and tried it. During my initial research on this type of deep litter I found the KNF pig sites that talk about keeping it dry using things like sawdust and putting the bacteria and fungus to work to digest the manure. I didn't find much at the time on how to do it for chickens back then so I was winging it.
I used hardwood sawdust that was free from a local sawmill that was perfect. I had been racking my litter every few days for years and I continued to rake the litter especially under the roost. After a short while I noticed that the litter had dried out, turned gray, and I didn't see any manure even under the roost. There wasn't any ammonia smell either.
That was back in 2015 and I haven't had to clean my coop since. I have converted a couple of coops locally but it took me doing all the work for them to convert. They both love it now but wouldn't have converted on their own. The stumbling block seems to be starting the process. Folks would rather clean the coop periodically than to switch over and never clean again.
The last few years I have dabbled with using the litter on my garden with fantastic results. The first year I put some on a raised bed in October and planted like I always did in the spring. I live in Missouri and our rocky clay soil is horrible. I had it tested and the report said the soil was deficient for planting in almost every way. I planted from seed and in my tomatoes I saw these leaves that were not like tomato leaves, they were huge and I assumed they were weeds. After pulling a few I noticed they looked like tomatoes but enormous tomato plants. I let them go and didn't add anything else to the soil. The plants grew like weeds and I even got a leaf that was 11 inches long. I couldn't believe how big the plants were. I had a farm hand at the time that didn't know how to shut a gate and the goats got in and ate all the leaves off the tomatoes twice and really crippled the plants.
Last year I decided to see what would happen if I put a half cup of litter in the ground at planting. I used walmart plants that were about 6 inches high with the magic chicken poo. My brother in law planted a garden and challenged me to a tomato grow off. We tracked our progress every friday. After the first 2 weeks my plants averaged 1 foot of growth per week. They quickly outgrew the cages and at 8 weeks were taken out by a storm. I still got a few 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes from the twisted plants but they clearly didn't reach their potential. My rhubarb hadn't done anything so I put some magic poo on that too. I had a leaf that was 5 feet long. The leaves were dark green and huge. My corn grew 3 stalks out of every seed along with most of them having 3 ears as well. My cilantro went to bolted and went to seed almost immediately after planting. The plants were about 3 feet tall. The cilantro re-seeded itself and started growing in november. It was about 5 inches high during superbowl weekend. By the first of may it was about 38 inches tall and went to seed again.
This year I just planted again and hope to have a well documented account of my garden again. Is anyone else doing this kind of stuff with chicken litter?
“Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and gain dominion over it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and all the livestock and all the earth and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth.”
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Live, love life holistically
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Levente Andras wrote:I use a mix of sand and ash in my coop. About 5 cm layer on the floor of the coop. I've been using the method for 3 years, and the result has been excellent - no smell AT ALL, easy to clean (I use a small rake and a cat litter scoop), and suitable also as dustbath when the hens don't feel like going out (e.g., because of bad weather).
“Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and gain dominion over it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and all the livestock and all the earth and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth.”
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Anthony Dougherty wrote:
Levente Andras wrote:I use a mix of sand and ash in my coop. About 5 cm layer on the floor of the coop. I've been using the method for 3 years, and the result has been excellent - no smell AT ALL, easy to clean (I use a small rake and a cat litter scoop), and suitable also as dustbath when the hens don't feel like going out (e.g., because of bad weather).
True KNF coop needs no cleaning, it is microbially cleaned
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Saana Jalimauchi wrote:Kevin, Anthony, anyone!
I need help with setting up KNF deep litter system! I wasnt prepared to getting chickens so soon yet but now it seems that in two months we will have chickens. I will start making the IMOs as soon as possible.
Is hardwood (pine) sawdust really okay? The neighbour with the sawmill said that it’s not good as it had resin in it? He said that it should be soft wood, but ofcourse he’s not doing KNF but using the sawdust as is..
I will have a coop with wood floor, the deep litter thing works in it too? We can have really cold winters, this is not Hawaii or anything, it’s Finland (zone ~5b). The coop will of course have some heat in the winter but not much.
Aaaaa I’m exited and a bit scared too!
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Anthony Dougherty wrote:
In the knf system they recommend concrete, I imagine the reason is the imos will decompose any wooden surfaces. You also want to dig down 4-6 feet
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Saana Jalimauchi wrote:Anthony, thanl you for the reply and for the video, I will check it out!
Concrete floor might be possible but what does this mean:
Anthony Dougherty wrote:
In the knf system they recommend concrete, I imagine the reason is the imos will decompose any wooden surfaces. You also want to dig down 4-6 feet
Digging down on the run is of course doable but how does the concrete floor thing work..? Sorry if I’m missing something obvious
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Saana Jalimauchi wrote:I’m starting to think that this is not doable at all in a insulated winter chicken house.. They don’t have actual coops where they are doing this, just those runlike cages..?
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He’s the throttle in our relationship and I’m the brake! 
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There are lots of great threads about all aspects of chicken keeping on Permies. If you're in a high predator pressure area, I highly recommend you plan your fruit trees along with the concept of "chicken paddocks" - contained areas so that your chickens can forage and clean up the fruit trees when you want them there. There are threads about chicken friendly plants, but you'd need to research which ones are suitable for your climate. Even a small flock would benefit from 6 paddocks if you want them to forage a significant chunk of their diet.Saana Jalimauchi wrote:Whew.
More time to research chicken keeping and to do things properly and to focus on the fruit trees and other perennial plantings this year.
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Kevin Schaible wrote:
I liked the idea of deep litter but the litter didn't work as well as I would have liked using the typical methods of trying to emulate the forest floor or compost pile in the coop. The biggest problem was the moisture that compost and the forest needs to break down manure. Moisture creates an anaerobic system that leads to ammonia buildup, manure buildup and cleaning or adding material on a regular basis.
I stumbled on Korean Natural Farming deep litter and tried it.
I wrestled with reality for 36 years, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
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Saana Jalimauchi wrote:Thank you! I will definitely look into designing the gardens so that the chickens can be a part of the ecosystem in multible ways
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Saana Jalimauchi wrote:Kaarina, so sorry for your loss. I have been following your journey with the chickens and everything here on Permies, thank you for posting great content!
We still have a plan to get chickens next spring.. I stopped researching the KNF method for now, it seems like it wouldn’t work in our climate. Some parts of it might come handy though.. We’ll see.
As for letting the chickens free range - I don’t think it would work at our place either (forest in Etelä-Savo). The previous owner had chickens and the runs were covered with nets. But I’m hoping that I could arrange supervised free ranging time (and super secretly I’m hoping to train the chickens to follow me for an adventure to the forest to eat bilberries and stuff
A build too cool to miss:Mike's GreenhouseA great example:Joseph's Garden
All the soil info you'll ever need:
Redhawk's excellent soil-building series
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- Tim's Homestead Journal - Purchase a copy of Building a Better World in Your Backyard - Purchase 6 Decks of Permaculture Cards -
- Purchase 12x Decks of Permaculture Cards - Purchase a copy of the SKIP Book - Purchase 12x copies of Building a Better World in your Backyard
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Saana Jalimauchi wrote:Trace, thank you! I have lately been reading about the chickens not needing actual heating in winter -stuff.. I got scared of the possible fire hazards the heating of the coop might bring. Are you using the KNF deep litter method with the specific inoculants?
Do you have any pictures of your coop in Permies? It would be really nice to see your setup!
![[Thumbnail for Woods-coop.JPG]](/t/112510/a/225947/Woods-coop.JPG "Filename: Woods-coop.JPG
Description:")
A build too cool to miss:Mike's GreenhouseA great example:Joseph's Garden
All the soil info you'll ever need:
Redhawk's excellent soil-building series
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build a better world instead of being angry at bad guys
https://greenlivingbook.com
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