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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?
Kris Hoffman wrote:Greetings from north central WI -home of beer and cheese. We currently run 20-30 feeder pigs (Berkshire and large black) in a pasture setting- rotationally grazing them over the summer/fall. I am currently feeding organic feed ration plus whey. After a good look at the pig's bottom line and feedback from my customer base- I am investigating other sources of local feed. I can get spent brewer's grain from a craft brew pub once weekly-think a pickup load of 70% moisture, high fiber material with most of the sugars pulled out in the brewing process. I can also get nearly unlimited amounts of whey each week, I pick up in that same old dodge pickup truck in a 300 gallon tote.
anyone have experience in fermenting slop for pigs- would these make decent substrates? the spent grains aren't that valuable for a monogastric digestive system-would fermenting bump up the availability?
alternatively considering using the spent grains as a substrate for wine cap mushrooms.
Thanks! Kris