Chickens and Grubs

Don and I are avid composters; Don probably more than I am. He reminds me of that old nursery rhyme about "snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails." Sometimes the more disgusting a project is, the more he seems to enjoy it. He likes to take care of and feed our kitchen composting worms, for example.

Actually, a properly-managed compost pile is far from disgusting. When well managed, compost piles do not smell unpleasant at all. But they do harbor a variety of bugs, microorganisms, and other things that I am not enough of a scientist to explain. Don seems to revel in this, particularly in the grubs.

Honestly, I think he revels in the grubs for their own sake ("snakes and snails..."). But he also likes to spoil our pets, and our four laying hens love nothing better than insects, particularly goodies from the compost pile, and especially grubs.

We are lucky that our climate is in "Zone 7" on the climate maps, which means that we are in the northernmost range of the Black Soldier Fly. These flies are voracious at eating up kitchen scraps to the point of being scary in a B horror-movie sort of way. And they make fantastic nutrition for the chickens, converting the kitchen scraps to fat, protein, and calories, which our dear hens then convert to eggs for us and fertilizer for our compost piles and garden.

Then the garden waste and kitchen scraps go into the compost pile, which then grows new larvae right up until the weather gets too cold for the soldier flies in the fall. Don has discovered that if he puts a big pile of "green" type kitchen scraps in the compost bin when the weather is warm, then covers that with a good layer of sawdust so it doesn't smell, then puts some chunks of fresh pineapple with the moist side down on top of the pile and the hard shell of the pineapple up toward the sky, then he can harvest black soldier flies by the handful (I shudder) to feed to our "girls," as folks in the U.S. call their chooks (a British or Australian name for backyard hens).

Black Soldier Fly Larvae Wriggle in the Remains of a Pineapple

I jokingly call Don their "rooster," because he brings them the choicest (to them) morsels and tries to make sure all the girls get their fair share, despite their jockeying and pecking order. And, believe me, they watch him closely and follow him around the yard, especially during composting season.

The Hens Watch Don Carefully During Composting Season

Don Makes Sure All the Chickens Get Their Fair Share

 Disclaimer: There is some risk of botulism, or "Limberneck," to chickens that eat fly larvae, especially if the grubs have grown in anaerobic conditions, such as in carcasses. For more information in general on raising Black Soldier Fly Larvae, check out this blog.

Worm Composting Update

Don purchased a Worm Factory worm composting system with five trays for me a few  years ago. Over time, the system has become more Don's hobby than mine. He says it's because I am tender-hearted, and if I think of them as his worms, not mine, then I will be more comfortable feeding the occasional excess to our hens.

I suspect it's more because the worms like dark and decay, and they are wriggly and messy. Don is such a boy at heart that he finds true joy in messing with them. I enjoy watching him work with them and talk about them. But I must say that I am much happier now that we've found a spot for them on our porch and not in our kitchen or bathroom where they have resided previously.

He might also be the one in charge of them because he is a scientist at heart and likes to experiment more. Like him, I carefully read the valuable instructions that came with our Worm Factory. Unlike him, I feel compelled to stick pretty closely to the written instructions.

But I can't complain, since the worms have thrived--and then some!--under Don's care.

The worms are obviously thriving in the second bin down. This is before feeding time.

One of the things Don does differently is he puts mostly carbonaceous matter in the top bin. When that has been in the composter a while, he moves the tray down to the second one down. He then puts a new carbonaceous tray on top. He feels that this top tray discourages vinegar flies that sometimes compete with the worms for food, and he no longer has to dig through the carbon to put the food in underneath the carbon on the top tray, which the manufacturer suggests. He also thinks his system gives the worms more options regarding moisture, temperature, etc., as they move around the bins to keep themselves comfortable.

Don just dumps their food in the second tray down and then replaces the top tray with the carbon. He thinks the worms like the added moisture, and he finds the whole process less work than using the manufacturer's instructions. He leaves the bottom trays underneath these two  for quite a while for the worms to pass through and re-digest. The bottom trays are former top and second trays that are waiting for us to need some compost around the yard and gardens.

Here is a view of the top, carbon-laden, tray, where fewer worms visit.

The instructions say to either grind up the worms' food scraps or freeze them before feeding them to the worms. This hastens the decomposition process and makes it easier for the worms to feed. Freezing kills any fruit-fly larvae (really vinegar flies) that might be already in the scraps. But Don grinds the food in a specially-dedicated food processor--

--Yes! The worms in our house have their own food processor!--

And then he puts in the a mason jar in the freezer for at least a few days. Finally, he thaws it out and feeds it to the worms.

Here are Don's worms with some new food dumped in the second tray.

Don is adding a second helping of food from a mason jar. The worms digest it quickly!

Needless to say, we have very little food waste in our household. I belong to a wonderful CSA through Farm Chicks Produce, so I cook a lot from scratch, and we have certain vegetable peels and tops that our hens won't eat. We also pick up scraps from a local restaurant, and whatever our hens won't or shouldn't eat usually goes to the worms.

Both the worm tea from the composting system and the compost itself is fantastic for our own vegetables and herbs. Any extra worms are great protein for feeding the hens, and the hens love to spread the compost around our lawn and garden beds when they get the chance. While they scratch through the compost, they like to hunt through it for tasty treats.

Overall, the worm bin is a huge success despite the fact (or because?) Don does not manage the system according to the manufacturer's directions.

By the way, vermicomposting does not require a fancy store-bought system to work. Here is general advice from Cornell. Perhaps you will start your own worm composting system? If so, let us know what works for you!

Hens as Compost Turners in the Garden

Don and I need more garden beds. But we spent time, money, and a lot of muscle building the four raised beds that we started with, so we thought we would build our next four beds the lazy man's way, using a method called sheet mulching or the lasagna layer technique. It's a way to compost in place to build up soil for a new bed instead of digging down to get your garden. The biggest drawback is that you have to wait a season or so before planting.

Don and I recently set up some lasagna-layer beds, but I admit they didn't look like much. They looked like they'd take years to break down into something I'd be willing to plant vegetables in. Here is a picture of what we were starting with. It contains layers of cardboard, leaves, somewhat aged compost, and straw mixed with a week's worth of manure from our chicken coops:

Sheet-mulched raised beds before attention from our hens

Don and I know how much our girls love to scratch and forage for insects, seeds, and other food, so we wondered if we could use those skills to turn these beds and get the composting process going faster. Don built a pen that fit over our raised beds. There's a pop-hole that leads from our chicken tractor to the pen over the beds, as pictured and described in this post. We had already used the hens in this pen as herbiciders and pesticiders in our raised asparagus beds, but we wanted to see what they would do when we turned them loose on our future garden beds as well.

The first thing we noticed was that the new digs were a huge hit with the hens. They even ate about 50% less feed when on a fresh sheet-mulched bed, presumably from all the fresh food they find on their own. Here is a brief video of our girls having a good time working a bed this morning. It's the same bed I pictured at the top of this page, but it already is starting to look different due to the hen's attention.

Here is what the same bed looked like at the end of the day today:

Nike is pecking at something good in the compost pile!

Sharp-eyed Athena is begging for a treat-- got any meal worms?

After about three days of attention from the girls, the bed starts to lose the girls' interest, and they start eating a lot more feed. Perhaps they've found all the weed-seeds and bugs that they're going to for a while. They will be ready for us to move their tractor and pen to another bed or a different part of the yard. But this is what the bed will look like after just those three days:

Raised bed after three days of chicken-tilling efforts

There is no doubt about it: the chickens are speeding the decomposition process and composting our sheet-mulched beds into usable soil faster. They basically turn other people's garbage into the raw materials of a vegetable garden. And they do it without the noise, pollution, or expense of gas-powered tillers or other equipment. They literally work for chicken feed, and they are happy about it, and they add valuable nitrogen to the bed in the form of their own manure while they're at it!

One important decision we have left is how soon to plant after the chickens have turned the bed. Since they have deposited fresh droppings, and their manure can transmit salmonella, published advice is to wait for 90 to 180 days after the chickens have visited the bed to plant a food crop, depending on the crop. But we needed to wait at least that long before planting under the sheet-mulch system, anyway, so we have little to lose, and lots to gain, by having the chickens work the beds for us.

**Update on 1/18/14: We have been using those sheet-mulched beds to grow garlic, and I now have a fig tree growing very happily in one. I cannot believe how quickly the beds broke down into something usable and very fertile. I think the hens' manure and aerating-skills were a huge part of the success.

Horse Manure

“You can’t chemical your way out of soil infertility” 

– Joel Salatin

We finally found a source of horse manure that is definitely free of a chemical that causes toxic compost. The owners of the property keep bees, so they never spray any chemicals, and they said they don't feed hay. We found them through our local Freecycle List. Actually, we found two sources, I mean horses:

Annie the Escape Artist

It seems strange to me that property owners are willing to give up compostable manure. In my eyes, manure is valuable, and getting rid of it, the loss of a great opportunity. If I had a couple of horses, I would be eagerly harvesting their manure and mixing it with sources of carbon. The carbon both decreases the smell and helps lock in the manure's valuable nitrogen. When the compost pile cooled off, I would use it for vermicomposting. I'd sell the red wrigglers or feed them as a source of protein to my chickens . I'd compost the chicken manure, too.

Then I would use the composted manure and the worms' castings to improve the soil in my lawn and gardens. Heck, if I had more compost than I could handle, I suppose I'd sell that, too.

All this guy wants is for us to leave the gate open...

...Back to reality. Of course, I do not have horses nor am I even allowed chickens without changes to the zoning laws in Chesapeake, Virginia. So Don and I headed off yesterday evening to a local farm. We gathered the hopefully-nontoxic manure, and then we collapsed with exhaustion. Don always seems to pick the hottest days of the year (or the muddiest) to go get horse manure.

Don working in the heat

This morning I loaded about half the manure into our ComposTumbler.  I added some weeds, some yard waste from my garden, some scraps from my kitchen, some hay and shavings mixed with manure from a local guinea-pig and rabbit rescue, and some clean, non-toxic sawdust we collected from a local woodworker, again through Freecycle. Tomorrow I will start to load up one of our other composters with the rest of the horse manure combined with more sawdust. I like the tumbler better because it composts faster. The compost is so easy to turn and aerate!

On the other hand, a regular compost pile is nice, too. It is pleasant to just compile the ingredients and then let the compost slowly break down while we go about our daily lives.

The farm also has peacocks, dogs, and a mini-pig

Composting is generally a pretty easy and forgiving process. Just put the ingredients together in an appropriate bin and let mother nature take its course. There are many composters available on the market, or you can build yourself an inexpensive 4x4x4' bin out of scrap wood and chicken wire or welded fencing.

If you are new to composting, my advice is to read up a little bit, so you know what to avoid composting, and then just start. If you want to garden but don't want to turn compost or even dig a bed, make the compost right in the garden bed using the no-till lasagna layering method. Just be sure to plan at least a season ahead. It is a great feeling to keep waste out of the landfill. It also feels great to take other people's garbage-- or sanitation problem, in the case of the horses-- and turn it into something useful and good, like flowers or vegetables. For more on toxic compost, check out this article at Mother Earth News.

Mother Nature is creative; sometimes we just need to help her along!

**Update: For an overview of different composting methods, check out this website from the University of Illinois.

Update: Hens are now legal in my backyard in Chesapeake, VA, with certain restrictions.

Kitchen Composting Update

I took some pictures to update my composting post from December. Our composting worms have been happily turning paper and kitchen scraps into organic fertilizer for us. They are even reproducing, since we occasionally catch sight of baby red wrigglers crawling through the compost bin. The babies are camera-shy, and I don't have any pictures of them yet, but I have some pics of their fat, happy parents.

Update on 6/30/12: I am sad to report that we have released our composting worms into a compost pile in the wilds of my backyard. I hope they make out OK!

The reason is that we were not careful enough about freezing or microwaving our food scraps, and we may have over-fed our worms. As a result, our kitchen was overrun with vinegar flies.  We tried burying the kitchen scraps with a deeper layer of brown organic matter, but it didn't help enough.

So, sadly, we collected the vermicompost and spread it in my gardens, and then we released the worms to fend for themselves. NOT in soil, mind you! They would be sure to die there. We have a compost bin full of hay, wood shavings, guinea-pig and rabbit manure, as well as food scraps. We released them there in the hope that they'll have some chance of surviving there.

My worms' new home

We washed out the bins really well. When the vinegar flies are gone from our kitchen, we are going to set up the compost bins again and order more worms. But we'll be careful not to overfeed them, and to freeze or (more likely) microwave our kitchen scraps before feeding, both to help it break down faster for the worms, and to kill off any fly larvae or eggs before they have a chance to become a nuisance.

Live and learn.

Update on 10/25/12: Don and I have been missing our composting worms, so we decided to start the kitchen worm bin back up this fall. Don dug through the outdoor compost bin to look for red wrigglers, but they were gone! Either they've dispersed or something evil befell them. There were a lot of ants in the pile, and Don read somewhere recently that worms and ants don't get along.

So I went online to findworms.com and found a source of red wrigglers. They were shipped to our home in great condition and with good instructions. Since we've had worms before, we had their home all set up and ready for them. They've settled in quickly and are already making short work of the kitchen scraps they're getting. We've been microwaving the food and cooling it off before giving it to the worms.

I've also been reminded since then to try DE if we have trouble with flies or other insects in our worm bin. DE does the worms no harm, is perfectly natural, but kills most insects without any poisons. I wish I'd remembered that last time round!

Update for January, 2013: Our re-established red wrigglers are doing great. Don is chopping up their food, using a small food processor dedicated for the purpose. He either freezes their food for a few days, or microwaves it, or both. He makes sure the food returns to room temperature before he puts it in their bin, of course. The worms are thriving, they eat a good part of our daily kitchen scraps, and the flies are gone. Success!

Toxic Compost? How to tell

Don and I want to pick up some well-aged horse manure to use in our asparagus beds, but I've been unnerved by reports of toxic compost from horse and cattle manure caused by an herbicide called aminopyralid.

Here  is a report on how gardeners can use pea seeds as a simple test to check their composts for toxicity before incorporating them in their gardens. A little checking and planning ahead of time can avoid a garden that could be toxic to plants for two or three years.


Mother Earth News also has an informative article on this topic. Unfortunately, these herbicides are becoming so pervasive, it is getting increasingly difficult, perhaps even impossible, to avoid them.

Update: Don and I later started a group, 4 Chesapeake Hens, that successfully lobbied City Council to allow up to six hens on all single-family lots with certain restrictions.

Longing for Urban Chickens

I live in Chesapeake, Virginia, which does not currently allow poultry anywhere except in areas zoned for agriculture. There is a national movement to raise "micro-flocks" of laying hens for their eggs in backyard spaces, even in urban centers. New York City even allows hens, and more and more people are keeping them as backyard pets. I have read City Chicks and other publications about responsible chicken keeping, and I could really use the hens' help in my garden. Properly managed, they eat pests and weeds and provide fertilizer to compost  for the garden while providing fresh, nutritious eggs and plenty of entertainment. They are as easy to keep as a cat. Unlike roosters, they are quiet, and they do not need roosters to lay eggs. Any hens I raised would have much happier, healthier lives than the poor animals raised in CAFOs for the mass-produced markets. I've started a Facebook Page for like-minded Chesapeake residents who would like to join forces with me in getting changes made to the law. If a resident and interested, like the page or leave me a comment here.

Update for 2012: We took some advice from City Chicks and actually found and read the animal-related laws in Chesapeake's municipal code. We might be able to have up to four "pet" chickens depending on our zoning, easements, etc. We plan to check on this when we can.

Update for February, 2012. We discovered that to have chickens in Chesapeake one must have at least 3 acres of land, which, alas, we do not. There is a petition to allow urban chickens in nearby Virginia Beach, VA. If Virginia Beach allows them, perhaps Chesapeake could be next? Needless to say, we are supporting the petition.

Update for March, 2012. The Facebook Page has 17 "likes" and some folks besides me posting on it, asking questions, and even a few tentative offers to help. I tend to be a "doer," so I have a hard time understanding the delay in storming City Hall, lol! I got a good suggestion to post flyers at the local feed stores that sell chicks. I am also researching the space requirements for a few chickens. Hint: it's A LOT less than three acres! But that's fodder for another post.

Update for April, 2012. The Facebook page has 30 "likes" and our group's online petition on Change.org has 58 signatures in three days as I type this. This video on underground chickens recently shared on the Facebook page shows how clean and well kept the birds can be and how much families can enjoy them. I hope the petition gets enough attention from actual Chesapeake residents. I suspect local voters will have the most clout with city council members.

Update for July, 2012. We have over 130 fans on our Facebook page, and the petition has reached its goal of over 500 signatures. Actually, we have close to 600. We got some positive publicity on Channel 3, WTKR news recently. We have one council member, Robert Ike, who is completely supportive, and there is real hope we can get this thing before the City Council in coming weeks.

Update for November, 2012: City Council voted on November 20 for TA-Z-12-07 with changes to allow up to six hens and with the removal of the privacy fencing requirement. Now all Hubby has to do is build us a coop! The ordinance comes with a one-year sunset clause. Council must vote by December 20, 2013 to keep the ordinance, or residents' rights will lapse. Those who already have them will be "grandfathered," however.

Update for November, 2013: City Council voted on November 26, 2013, to make the ordinance permanent. The vote was 6-3, with Council Members Debbie Ritter, Rick West, and Vice Mayor John De Triquet voting against the ordinance.

Oh, and our Facebook page has over 1,000 fans! Wow!

Kitchen Composting

I have a confession to make: I have pet worms that live under my kitchen table.

They are not just any kind of worms. They are a specific kind of "red wriggler," or composting worms. Depending on the temperature and their living conditions, they eat up to their weight in food a day, mostly shredded paper and kitchen scraps. Their worm-castings (a nice way of saying "worm poop") is an organic fertilizer and soil amendment that is absolutely the best of anything available for your garden.  I've read that worm castings are up to eleven times more potent in their effect on plants and soil than any other type of compost.

And any excess moisture that drains from the bin can be watered down into "compost tea" that not only fertilizes your garden but protects plants against diseases, too, as a foliar spray. Since I try to garden organically, it makes sense for me to keep these quiet, easy-to-keep pets around. Why buy expensive organic fertilizers when the worms are so happy to convert your kitchen scraps for you?

I did make mistakes with them when I first brought them home. First of all, I made the mistake of buying "red wrigglers" at a local bait shop to get started. I later learned that this may have been a mistake. There are thousands of species of worms, and if you don't get just the right kind, Eisenia foetida, you can have problems.

What kind of problems? Well, the "right" kind of red wrigglers hate light, which helps keep them at home in their cozy little worm bin. Instead, I initially brought to my kitchen "Lewis and Clark" worms that were bent (pun intended) on exploring the brave, new world of my kitchen at all times of the day and night. I'd wake up in the morning to find them all over my floors, exploring my cabinets, you name it. And the only thing worse than stepping on a worm when you're blundering around bare-foot is finding your pet worms dead and drying up all over your floors, etc. After all, I like the little guys, and I feel responsible for them.

Perhaps they didn't like their initial housing arrangement. Since my wonderful fiance, Don, bought me a vermiculture bin with detailed instructions on how to get started, including advice not to buy worms at a bait store, my worms have stayed happily at home. Perhaps it's the new bin, perhaps it's changes to the bedding, perhaps my "Lewis and Clark" worms have removed themselves from the gene pool, leaving the stay-at-home types behind, or perhaps  a mix of the above. Now that they've settled in, I couldn't be happier with them. They are making some wonderful looking soil that I can't wait to add to my plantings in the spring.

For more information on vermiculture, try this Eek! website, this website from the University of Illinois, or this link I found through "Mother Earth News," which is the publication that got me into vermicomposting (worm-farming) in the first place. The composter Don bought me is called a Worm Factory. It looks just like this one:




Update for January, 2013. Our original worms went to a backyard compost pile. We had overfed them, and not fed them carefully enough, and we got vinegar flies that began to invade our whole kitchen. I wish I had remembered to try DE in the compost bin! That probably would have taken care of the problem without hurting the worms.

Don and I missed our worms, though, so I bought more a few ago from an online company that sells them. This batch of worms is doing GREAT! Whenever Don feeds them, he chops up their food into very tiny bits, and then either microwaves or freezes it first, or both. Either process kill any fly larvae that may be present in the food, thus preventing the vinegar flies. So far it's worked great, and the worms are thriving.

Don even bought a dedicated little food processor just for chopping up worm food. People tell me that my husband and I are two peas in a pod. They don't know the half of it!