Chicken manure - what to do

[Sparkly]

A couple of months ago we got our chucks. I have been transferring all of the poop and the bedding (hemp) into a black darleck on the allotment. It also has newspaper in there that I have been putting under the perch so that I can remove this each day to catch most of the droppings. What shall we do with this? I think the hemp bedding will rot down quicker than woodchips, but how long do you think we will have to leave this? Could I pour this over a bed now and leave till spring and dig in? We do this with horse manure, but not sure if it is appropriate with the chicken stuff.

[Sparkly]

[manicscousers]

Hiya, Sparkly, we used ours out of the dalek at 18 months old, just spread it on the cabbage bed, I've never grown brassicas that well before, except for the calabrese, think there might've been a bit too much nitrogen in there, they grew huge but with small heads, think it needs to rot down for quite a while, ours had paper, straw and cardboard in, too  :)

[Sparkly]

Thanks Mal I will leave it in there till next year.  ;D

[grannyjanny]

I've just had a look on the hemcore site & it should rot down in a couple of months.

[saddad]

When I was young we kept chickens by the hundreds... when we cleaned out the sheds we had barrows of the stuff. We had a huge heap. Mint got in it and it grew to over 5 foot tall...  ::)

[goodlife]

This time of the year I put my chikens bedding (hemcore) straight over dug soil. If it would be shavings...those I would compost in bin. I have used shavings as mulch over raspberry rows though..but only during winter when the soil is wet...