what do you do with their bedding? Specifiaclly, we are using straw right now for the goats (may switch to wood shavings once I talk to the lumbermill here). I have been just dumping it in the big pile of "stuff" - originally a compost pile from the old owners but DH :vent: has been putting all kinds of crap there.

I'm just wondering if I should put the stuff directly on the garden plot that we will be clearing for the next year to help enrich the soil now or should we just keep adding it to a compost pile.

I'm putting the spring chicken manure in a compost pile with green stuff and other things to compost like kitchen scraps. In the fall when the garden's done I put it right on the soil spread out and till it as the snow first falls. I only clean out their coop 2x/year and use the "deep litter" method - basically deep litter, LOL, that I just keep adding to in order to freshen it up, and clean out and start fresh 2x/year. I use pine shavings.

Do you have a picture of what the deep litter method looks like? Does it really smell? I can't do it for the goats but I am curious. I think DH may go for birds next year once I mentioned that we might get a tax break:lol:

Do you have a picture of what the deep litter method looks like? Does it really smell? I can't do it for the goats but I am curious. I think DH may go for birds next year once I mentioned that we might get a tax break:lol:

We have a board in the front of the coop that creates a little "lip" so there's space for it to build up. It smells right now but it's about two months overdue for a cleanout. :P It doesn't usually smell. As soon as it starts smelling I buy a bag of shavings and throw it in there. We also have quite a spacious coop for the number of birds and we have roosts, so we do clean out under the roosts a bit more often, maybe every other month? That takes care of a lot of the poop.

I am not sure about goat manure but I know with poultry it's too "hot" to put right on the garden because the nitrogen will burn the plants.

Lots to think about.

Right now we have 2 big garden plots that we let go. This place is a lot to take care of garden wise (lots of perennials). We plan to get the food gardens ready this fall in prep for the spring and greenhouse building.

I'm going to think about a way to make that deep litter method work in the space we have.

Our goats' bedding is hay (that didn't meet horse standards and costs less) as straw is outrageously expensive up here.

We have two compost bins for the horse manure and the straw gets added to that, but not often. The goat bedding is on top of pallets to keep moisture away from them and it has worked really well. We give them more as it wears down or gets eaten. I was just looking at it yesterday and the stuff on top of the pallets is still great, but the stuff in front of the pallets needs to be shoveled up and put in the compost.

When I was researching composting the horse manure and also putting it right into the garden, I found that the cautions against horse manure have to do with horse manure from stables where the manure is mixed in with the bedding. If that bedding is wood shavings or wood whatever, the decomposing wood takes up all the nitrogen as it is being released and it gets used up. (Okay, not explained well, but you get the idea.) Straw bedding however was fine and better for putting directly into the garden or composting first. Because of that I'd suggest sticking with straw instead of wood shavings.

Our chicken house is on bare ground. We throw hay on the ground and their droppings fall on it. We add more hay now and then. They scratch around in it and mix it up. They are only locked in at night though, so there is no day time build-up. They spend their days roaming all over. We've never had to clean it out. Nature is at work under those layers breaking it down. We are thinking about relocating our chicken house and at that time I intend to shovel up what is in the old location at put it in the composts.

Rhea