Aug. 6th, 2012: What's The Scoop On Chicken Poop

Frequently, when I mention to a non-chicken lover about our impending adventure into urban chickening, the person will ask " what are you going to do about the poop"?  I started to get worried that I had overlooked an apparently overarching problem.  Is the poop lethal?  Does it have a half life like Plutonium?
Can three little hens actually produce so much poop that we will have to move?  I began my look for the real scoop on chicken poop.

I think of myself as a glass is half full person ( well, most of the time anyway).  So I went looking for the upside of poop.  Turns out there is a huge upside and very little downside, especially with so few chicken's.

Who knew that chicken poop was the be all and end all of manures that, when composted, can turn your garden into a lush oasis of greenness.  Sounds wonderful, but ah...we don't have a compost pile.  I haven't composted since 1976 during my hippie phase on a commune in Oregon. But I figured if millions of people over the centuries could compost so can I.   I found simple DIY compost bin instructions in issue of Hobby Farms, Chickens magazine.  We can even add the chicken bedding ( organic material) to the pile. 

Also our little prefab coop is movable,  so we can move it around the yard. Plus the girls will be running around the whole yard a lot of the time happily spreading the poop over a much larger area than the coop offers. 

I am not much of a Gardener anyway, though I do love garden art.  I mean we do have a small container garden for herbs and one single tomato plant which is threatening to give us 2 tomatoes this year. So the composting may never actually happen, but it sounds good doesn't it? So farmery.

Anyway, now when the naysayers bring up the issue of chicken poop I can disabuse them of their fear.  If I do compost the chicken poop and other chicken evacuation accoutrement, I can offer to sell them some of our superior garden enhancing product.  No, on second thought I don't want to literally get into the manure business.  I already get into enough figurative manure as it is.

So those of you out there who are considering urban chickens, never rear.  There is nothing to fear.  Chickens know how to do it.  We just need to get out of their way.  Ciao Bellas