Composting and Farm Update

Good Afternoon, 

Everyday this week (except for Monday, due to no school) is available for deliveries! 

Eggs: 

Egg production has risen a little bit to about 6 dozen a day! As the days continue to get longer, there will be more eggs coming in. 

To start the week off, there will be about 15 medium dozen and 10 large dozen available. 

Newsletter: 

This week I decided to do a newsletter about what has been going on recently on the "farm." 

Back in December, since most of it was Christmas break, there was not a whole lot of activity going on except the normal jobs with the chickens (feeding, collecting/washing eggs). One of the challenges during the winter is trying to keep bedding dry for as long as possible. Since there is quite a bit of moisture in the air, anything that is already wet only continues to get wetter. However, since I use a lot more straw in the winter months, along with hay (to keep the egg yolks orange), a lot more compostable material is created. Since the chickens spend more time in their coop and run than they do outside during the winter (although this winter has been nice enough to let them out almost everyday), there is quite a bit of manure and bedding produced. This year in particular has been beneficial for quick composting of all this material, since there are more chickens. What ends up happening is the chicken manure (high in nitrogen) and the straw and hay (carbon sources) start to be digested by millions of micro-organisms, which ultimately turn the chicken manure/bedding mix back into super nutrient rich dirt. That's the short story. This transformation takes place over a period of about 6 months for high nitrogen systems. Most of the action takes place in the middle of that 6 month period. What I mean by action is that you can "see" the micro-organisms eating the manure/bedding mix. While I can't point out little animals eating straw, their presence is manifested in ways such as steam and heat. 

These bugs are busy, and there are literally millions of them per square foot. What happens when you get to moving around a lot? You typically create heat, and the same goes for those "bugs." They create heat, and combined with moist bedding, they create steam. This steam is not just water vapor, but it also carries with it ammonia which is derived from the decomposing nitrogen. Its not a pleasant smell, to say the least. That is one of the drawbacks to composting with an imbalanced nitrogen to carbon ratio. A properly balanced compost pile ( about 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen) has no smell, but it takes a few months longer to fully compost. I utilize both the balanced and the imbalanced "method" of composting. In the winter, I use the imbalanced composting in the chickens' covered outdoor section for heating purposes. This year in particular, the outside temperature in the covered portion of the chickens housing had to have been close to 10* F warmer. When turning the bedding (to give the micro-organisms some air, which helps them digest material faster), the heat produced could be felt radiating from the composting bedding! It felt like the temperature was close to 100*F, which was a nice feeling on a cold day. 

While it is simply nice to have a warmer(er) building to work in, it also keeps the chickens comfortable. The warmer it is (within reason), the less a chicken has to eat to maintain her body temperature. Chickens are like people in some regards: they are at their best with long days that stay at 70 degrees, have plenty of food and water, dry housing, lots of things to do, and no clouds in the sky. Basically, the best days of their lives are from April thru June, if we are going with average Idaho weather. Don't get me wrong, they always are having fun, but late spring is when they really have lots of fun, and get into the most trouble too! 

In order to visualize what the compost has turned into from November thru December, here are some photos:

 Here is the inside of the run

This is a close up of how the bedding is being composted. The picture doesn't capture the steam that is coming out though... There is also quite a bit of dirt that is starting to form around the pieces of bedding. As a matter of fact, over the past 4 years or so, almost 2 inches of new dirt has been created within their run. While that number is based only on my observation, and there are several factors that can influence the amount of dirt, the change in the soil profile in their run is significantly different than when I first got chickens. The average rate of topsoil replacement, according to Scientific American, is about 3 centimeters of topsoil per 1000 years. Creating soil is a very interesting field to say the least.  

Just recently, the chickens got a new 1500 lb bag of feed, as well as a new feed mix to go along with it! I created another mix to add to the normal Non GMO feed. The new mix has:

Non GMO Corn

Wheat

Oats

Sorghum

Including the regular feed and the mix, the chickens get about 25% protein. The purpose of this new mix was to bring more energy into their diet to supply energy for making the medium eggs bigger. I am anxious to see just how good it will work! 

Below is a picture of the new mix, then the new bag of Non GMO Layer mix

 
 I wish the pictures could have been bigger, but this was as big as they could get for the email. 

Other than these few things, there hasn't been too much else going on. The things that have been going on have occupied quite a bit of time though, especially working on my car. 

 As always, if you have any questions, or would like more pictures (I couldn't put anymore photos in this email due to a size limitation!), I will be happy to send them to you! There are some additional resources on the Happy Hen Farms Blog too. 

Thank you!

Jack Stewart