Composting with Chickens: 

How the Flock Does Half the Work For You

Travis *My husband*  used to turn my compost pile by hand. Pitch fork, back bent, sweating in the spring mud, wondering if the pile was "hot enough" and whether I had the right carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, and generally making something very simple into something very complicated.

Then we figured out that we had a crew of tiny, enthusiastic, relentlessly hungry composters literally ten feet away. And we stopped turning the pile by hand almost entirely.

This is the chicken-run composting method, and it might be the single most useful practical change we've made on this homestead. Here's exactly how it works.

The Basic Concept

Instead of maintaining a separate compost pile that you have to turn, manage, and water, you build your compost inside or directly adjacent to your chicken run. The chickens do the turning — constantly, obsessively, because scratching is what they do — and they add nitrogen-rich manure directly into the mix at the same time. By the time the material is ready to use in the garden, it's been worked, turned, and inoculated by the flock for weeks or months.

It's not perfect compost science. It works anyway.

How to Set It Up (Standard Method)

1. Designate a composting area in or attached to your run. We use a corner of the run sectioned off loosely with some extra fencing — just enough to keep a pile contained but still accessible to the birds.

2. Add carbon material in deep layers. Straw, wood chips, dried leaves, garden trimmings — the more the better. This is your base and your carbon source. We keep a pile of old straw near the coop for this purpose.

3. Add kitchen and garden scraps directly into the pile rather than a separate bin. Vegetable peels, eggshells, herb trimmings, spent garden plants, wilted produce — it all goes in.

4. Let the chickens work it. They will scratch through it daily. This aeration is what makes the pile break down. You don't need to do it.

5. Add fresh carbon material regularly to balance the nitrogen from manure and kitchen scraps. If it starts to smell like ammonia, add more carbon. If it seems too dry, add a little water or more green scraps.

6. Harvest finished compost from the bottom a couple of times a year. The material that has been worked the longest will be at the bottom — dark, crumbly, and beautiful. Shovel it out from underneath and top-dress your beds.

🌿 Low-Energy Method

Deep litter. Don't even make it a separate pile. Just layer carbon material (straw, wood chips) into the floor of the chicken run itself, toss your scraps in there, and let the whole run floor become one giant slow compost. Once a year in early spring, scrape out the bottom layer and put it directly in the garden. Works beautifully, requires almost nothing from you.

What to Add, What to Skip

✅ Good Things to Add

Vegetable and fruit scraps · Eggshells · Spent garden plants · Straw and dried leaves · Grass clippings · Coffee grounds · Herb trimmings · Bread in small amounts

⛔ Skip These

Cooked meat and dairy (attracts predators, creates smell issues) · Citrus peels in large quantities · Anything moldy or rotten enough to make a person gag — the chickens will eat some questionable things, but truly putrid material isn't good for them either

What You End Up With

Over a season, your run floor or pile builds into some of the best garden amendments you can get — screened, worked, already mixed with nitrogen from the birds. It's not technically "hot compost" in the traditional sense, but the results in the garden are excellent, and the labor from you is minimal.

We pull compost in spring before planting and again in fall for bed prep. Both applications make a visible difference in soil texture and plant performance by mid-season.

💬 Real Talk

For the first two years, we kept chickens. I maintained a SEPARATE compost pile like a normal person, while also managing the run, and adding the manure to the separate pile. Extra steps. Extra work. The day I finally just started piling everything directly into the run and letting the birds go to town was a genuine homestead turning point.

Some people will tell you this doesn't make "real" compost. Those people are technically correct and also not the ones pitchforking your pile. The end result in your garden beds will speak for itself.

Last post in the series coming May 4th: what I'm actually planting this year — and more importantly, what I finally gave up on after years of trying to make it work.