Kitchen scraps - what's your favorite "recycle" method?

We're having hot compost pile, cold compost pile, bokashi, wormery and... chickens.

My question is...

In which of these methods would our kitchen scraps get "recycled" for the best use?

Offhand, I would vote for chickens -- a walking hot composter that gives you meat/eggs and ready-to-use high nitrogen "castings." Plus they're more fun to watch than the other methods.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Offhand, I would vote for chickens -- a walking hot composter that gives you meat/eggs and ready-to-use high nitrogen "castings." Plus they're more fun to watch than the other methods.

Good point, Douglas. Thank you.

Anyone has a different view or experience?

Nice! it sounds like you've got a lot going on there!

I love Bill Mollison's stacking techniques that he outlines in Permaculture, a Designer's Manual. His theory of "Cycles" is that you should try to feed every resource through as many systems as possible, in order to keep it on your site for as long as possible.

Speaking purely theoretically, since I don't raise chickens, I have heard that chicken manure can be (carefully and gradually) fed to worms, which can make it easier to apply to the garden. Plus, the worms might be fed back to the chickens (again, I am only speaking theoretically) thus keeping your resources cycling within your system.

So perhaps you don't need to choose between the two, if stacking them would increase your yield.

What do the chicken pros think? Does this sound reasonable?

My compost pile is most egg shells and hair as everything else is mostly eaten by raiders.  So I would argue where possible feed it to livestock that will eat it as fast as possible to get it in a form the raiders won't steal.

I make and use compost, but it takes quite a bit of time to get a good product.  If it were me, I would go with chickens too.  Mine get pretty much any kind of kitchen scraps, plus anything from my garden that isn't used, lawn clippings, weeds, whatever.  My compost is made from stuff I have when I have too much for the chickens to eat it, and from the chickens themselves.  Anything they don't eat gets thrown into the compost piles as well.

Paul of the "Back to Eden" movie, uses material from his chicken run exclusively in his garden.  He shovels it into a screened box over his wheel barrow, sifts outs the chunks and spreads it around his gardens with amazing results.  All his garden scraps, ashes from his wood stove, lawn trimmings, everything goes into the chicken run where they process it for him.

Trace Oswald wrote:All his garden scraps, ashes from his wood stove, lawn trimmings, everything goes into the chicken run where they process it for him.

That’s interesting... I have tons of ashes, but because our soil is already alkaline I never did anything with the ashes...
I remember reading somewhere that chicken like to dust themselves with ashes...
🤔

Chickens! And Worms! We rarely use our "official" compost bin anymore. We have three old washing machine drums inside the chicken run. We dump nearly all of our kitchen scraps into the drums for the chickens to rummage through. We give some to the worm bin, too.

The way I see it, feeding the chickens our good kitchen scraps helps to keep the feed bill lower. Our worms are pretty laid back, but they especially enjoy cabbage leaves and coffee grounds.

Chickens, the natural waste disposal.

The most rewarding use for kitchen scraps (potatoes, lettuce, carrots, etc.) I've found is as bait for those darn wild rabbits that are eating my fruit trees.

Hi, Some food scraps go in traps. Some down the drain. Some in the woods to feed the animals.

Stacie Kim wrote:Chickens! And Worms! We rarely use our "official" compost bin anymore. We have three old washing machine drums inside the chicken run. We dump nearly all of our kitchen scraps into the drums for the chickens to rummage through. We give some to the worm bin, too.
The way I see it, feeding the chickens our good kitchen scraps helps to keep the feed bill lower. Our worms are pretty laid back, but they especially enjoy cabbage leaves and coffee grounds.

Good points Stacie. Thank you for sharing.

Phil Grady wrote:Chickens, the natural waste disposal.

Yep... although they don’t eat everything (avocado, onions, citrus peels...)

Would love to have chickens, but not quite there yet, so my kitchen scraps go to the wormery.  The stuff they don't eat/like (onion peelings, citrus, avocado pits* and the cat's meat that he suddenly decides he doesn't like, has never liked and how dare I try to feed him such a terrible thing) goes into the kitchen scrap compost bin that the council then takes for composting/methane production.

* pretty much only Hass pits, any others that I think may be even slightly cold hardy, like Fuerte, Ettinger or Gem, get sown and sprouted just in case they hold the secret to North European cold-resistant-enough avocados!!

Alcina Pinata wrote:Would love to have chickens, but not quite there yet, so my kitchen scraps go to the wormery.  The stuff they don't eat/like (onion peelings, citrus, avocado pits* and the cat's meat that he suddenly decides he doesn't like, has never liked and how dare I try to feed him such a terrible thing) goes into the kitchen scrap compost bin that the council then takes for composting/methane production.

* pretty much only Hass pits, any others that I think may be even slightly cold hardy, like Fuerte, Ettinger or Gem, get sown and sprouted just in case they hold the secret to North European cold-resistant-enough avocados!!

Brilliant, Alcina... and had to laugh aloud about your cat’s attitude... so recognizable.
Make it an awesome day.

I am also in the camp of utilizing chickens as a first past recycler of food scraps. This gets turned into eggs and manure which then enter their own value streams on the homestead.

Manure ends up contributing to soil building as it gets composted into a final product. Eggs get consumed, the shells added back into the compost waste stream.