hot substrate - help a beginner please 🙏

My chicken house used to be the sauna bathouse. It has the hotroom and a dressing room. The hotroom can be heated, but the dressing room cannot. Thus there is a thick substrate in the dressing room, which I am at pains to get composting.

The substrate has all the poop produced by the flock of 25 and I have mixed it occasionally with a fork. It has smelled wonderful all the time, which in itself is a great thing. But it just does not heat up.

I may have overdone the amount of hay: I bring in new hay from the adjoining field every day. If that is the case, what would correct it? Humanure?

I covered the substrate with spruce cuttings in an attempt to "put a lid" on it. No idea if that was wise.

The waether forecast for the upcoming 10 dayd promises below zero Fahrenheit. I would really need the extra heat.

A few questions.

I am assuming you are trying to deep litter method?

How thick is the bedding? How long has it been there? Is it mostly hay?

If the pictures are an indication that it is only about a month or two, I think it might be still at the early stages of development. You should be adding little by little more bedding as the chickens waste inside the coop. As the layers build and the material starts to compost, you will start building a passive heat layer.

I would not recommended adding outside waste, I would worry about cross contamination and exposing the chickens to foreign bacteria.

Kaarina Kreus wrote:My chicken house used to be the sauna bathouse. It has the hotroom and a dressing room. The hotroom can be heated, but the dressing room cannot. Thus there is a thick substrate in the dressing room, which I am at pains to get composting.

The substrate has all the poop produced by the flock of 25 and I have mixed it occasionally with a fork. It has smelled wonderful all the time, which in itself is a great thing. But it just does not heat up.

I may have overdone the amount of hay: I bring in new hay from the adjoining field every day. If that is the case, what would correct it? Humanure?

I covered the substrate with spruce cuttings in an attempt to "put a lid" on it. No idea if that was wise.

The waether forecast for the upcoming 10 dayd promises below zero Fahrenheit. I would really need the extra heat.

Hi Karina!  I keep my chickens in the cold northern latitudes of Canada and I use straw on the floor of my coop which is the frozen ground.  Temperatures down to -50 degrees C.  I originally thought my chickens might get cold feet but as long as the straw is dry it insulates very well from the cold ground.  In order for the litter to compost it would need to to be moist.  It would also need to be deep like 45-60 CM.  It could freeze solid during the coldest times and would loose its ability to insulate the birds feet from the cold.  Compost also gives off ammonia which is harmful to your birds.  If the litter is dry and smells nice that’s perfect.   When winter is over pile up the dry litter and add some water. It will likely heat up then and break down quickly into soil.  Your chickens will do best in the cold with DRY litter.

Thank you!
Yes, the litter is very dry, I immediately add more stuff if it gets moist. So no composting happening then, until I get up to half a metre /couple of feet. Now it isn't even half of that.
Hay is expensive, so i have been cutting grasses, weeds and hay from my forest. Maybe I have simply been too lazy.
You know how you bring in an enormous pile and spread it nicely and everything looks fluffy and perfect. The next day, the pile has sunk dramatically and looks rather limpy!
At least I can be happy about the sweet aroma of fresh hay. The coop smells really nice, which in itself is a great achievement.

I will have think of another way of keeping their water from freezing then.

I understand Kaarina , it is a big job to fill a space like yours by hand from the forest!  The water freezing is the biggest problem we face in winter.   Do you have electricity or are you off- grid?

I get down to -40F/C and my coop just has wood shavings as the bedding.  It's probably 10-15 cm thick during winter and never heats up.  It won't unless it gets wet as Rene says.  I don't think it needs to compost and if it did, it's such a small amount of compost and is spread out so wide, that I don't think the heat would be noticeable.  If you have chicken breeds that are designed for the cold, a composting floor isn't needed (in my opinion).

I have no electricity, not even solar panels. I would need electricity mainly in the winter, but the days are only about 6 hours and the sun so weak that solar is useless.

My electricity resides in the local library, where I charge my phone power banks and rechargeable batteries for led lights.

So the water freezing problems keeps me grounded here. I can go away for the day max. Otherwise the chickens seem OK in the cold.

That is incredible, I can't even imagine what kind of an experience it must be to live there. People have been managing for hundreds of years, so I know its possible, but it seems so difficult.

Thank you for the photo!

Yes, I understand, I have a solar system in my RV and it is useless in the winter.  Kaarina, can you tell me how it is that you are using your sauna for a chicken coop?  Do you have a new sauna?  I have studied sauna construction and if I were one of your chickens I would want you to fire up the sauna stove!  LOL!

Very nice photo, you have access to the water!  

I don't have a new sauna yet. Next summer (no construction can tae place in the frozen half of the year)

I just did simple prioritising. Chickens give me eggs, Momma Nature's perfect lunch packs.
I can wash myself elsewhere. Bu where would I get pproteins, all vitamins and mineral (except C)  in a tasty bundle?

Those eggs look huge! Maybe it is the perspective but those must be some happy chickens none the less.