Why not get 7 pallets and make a 3 bin system for free?

Hmmmm, could you let the chickens have their way with one section, tossing them scraps etc for a few months, then move them to the next, scooping all that yummy stuff into a bin. Then plant your crop in the fertile pen.
Repeat with pen #2 etc???? You'd probably have to add some greens to the straw mixture > WAIT NO there's plenty of chicken S*** in there isn't there?
This sound like a perfect set up to me! Just add fresh straw to each of your 3-4 pens every time you switch their pens and you should have some fertile pens and some good stuff to put in a bin!
I don't know if the chickens would eat themselves sick, though. You might want to have a growing pen seperate from the chicken pen and pick and feed from that pen.
Heck! I might just steal your idea! Nancy

A compost bin should be a minimum of 4 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet and can go upwards to 6 feet wide by 6 feet high by however long you want. Pallets can be used to make a 1, [_], or 3 [_]_]_] bin system or any other number you want.
While allowing your chickens to get in the compost pile to scratch sounds like a good idea it is not since they will scatter your compost all over everywhere you probably won't want it.
The linked tutorial has some good information on constructing bins.

Here is a link that might be useful: compost tutorial

I totally with nancyjane...you will not want your chickens in your compost piles as they will scatter the contents and you will no longer have a working pile.

I do not feed my chicken any processed food. I keep the kitchen scraps for the compost pile separate from the trimmings from raw vegetables and fruit and feed them only the fresh stuff. I also give them bucketfulls of material from my weeding which contain greens (weeds) and also loose soil and they love to scratch in that.

Using large bins would be a better option than loose material. Pallets tied together is an awkward setup. A better approach is to break the pallets apart and build bins with the salvaged lumber. You can use new lumber as well.

These bins are about 3' x 3' and are stand alone. You can add or remove bins to a configuration without affecting the whole setup.

With the floor off the ground, rats cannot enter. Place the legs on stones or bricks to keep them from rotting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost bins

The chickens will not scatter the contents if the contents are inside pallets, or cages. But they will grind your organic matter to dust and accelerate its decomposition. They are just non stop grinding machines. My rough estimate is that a chicken can pulverize 30 lbs of soft organic matter (leaves, straws, clippings) a day. So I think you have a good idea that will work.

I suggest a composting area in each pen, made of one or more boxes such as four connected pallets. Chickens should be able to fly in and out of it, but when they dig the material is contained. My guess is that your organic matter will be ground so finely (and therefore compacted) that each pen will only need one box per pen. When you rotate the pen, disassemble the pallets and remove the compost.

You will get a lot of compost from the coop too, also finely minced. It is worth designing the systems so there is a tarp under both coop and composting box, for easy removal of the whole load.

We are building a bigger coop and run this year. The ultimate goal will be to have rotational pastures. For one part of the rotation, around the time of fall cleanup we will be dumping a lot of the yard plants into one of the pasturehes, allowing it to hopefully get pretty thick. The idea is to allow the birds to scratch through it in the winter, and then come spring, pile it up in a corner to "finish." During the other parts of the growing season, I can work on growing a forage crop when they are not in the desired pasture. Some of these ideas came from Harvey Ussery's poultry book and some of the information may even be on his website.

begging Glib's pardon...

His/her estimate of a chicken "Pulverizing 30 pounds of organic material per day"...would be if Big Bird (of Sesame Street) came to stay.

The problem with chickens in your compost is that for a compost pile to work and heat up, it needs to "be in a pile". If you started with a nice sized pile inside a bin no problem. But if you are building a pile, and let chickens work it, you would lose the effect of heat as they constantly scattered it. You would need to also constantly pile it back up... and the net effect would be zero. (or less)

I have seen about ten chickens grind a roll of spoiled hay, spread in the pen, in about two weeks. I may have overestimated the size of the roll, but surely it is 10 lbs/day. They will do that if they believe that there are edibles in there, and work on it from sunrise to dusk. The heat is unimportant at least to me, many of us prefer to have the active worm population that raw organic matter supports. The worms not only provide the best (vermi)compost, they also provide fine tilling. Unimportant if you have sandy soil, a big deal with heavy soils.

If the OM is already crumb sized due to the chickens, all the better and the worms will dispatch it faster. Keeping the stuff in a box will prevent scattering, but that is only for easy collection of the pile.

If it was me I'd experiment with letting the chickens dig/play. You haven't said how much material (or what kind) you would be composting. Putting a 6-12 inch layer of kitchen scraps/leaves/straw and letting them go to it might make some nice stuff for the soil. I'd try it, you have nothing to lose really.

Lloyd

This thread is an example of why I am stuck. LOL! No one agrees. I guess that means I can't go wrong. :D

Glib and Tishtoshnm have got my ear here. I spent my "free" time this week clearing out the space and really standing and looking at it, pondering what to do.

The chickens do shred things very quickly! I need worms in my beds because of the heavy clay. I have space to build what I need. I haven't time to lose building and rebuilding if things don't go right, which is why I am trying to figure it out first.

I will build one "pasture" that is small by comparison to the others to house the compost bins. Essentially, it will be a fenced-in compost area. I have space behind the shed for an 8'x 8' area. I will build two 4' ones facing each other.

When I fill one and want to "turn" it to the other bin, I'll invite the chickens to scratch in it. Then turn the bin and start over.

Do I "need" to put something on the bottom? I thought the worms would be more likely to come if I left the bottom as ground.

My chickens get my scraps, but I will use hardware cloth to line the outside of the bins to prevent most rodents.

I have tried a lot of different things that might be considered 'off the wall' by many people. Not a single one has ended up the way it started. Experimentation, trial and error, numerous modifications and I still don't think I have every thing optimized. It's okay for me though, the journey is most of the fun. Good luck with your project.

Lloyd

Here is my suggestion make 2 wooden boxs 4' x 4' square with the front of it only 2' high, dump your weeds, grass clippings and household scraps (which saves on feed and is healthy) and let them go to town on it. Every week sweep out the coop and dump the manure into the box (nitrogen) also. In a month start using the other box This will attract the chickens and you can wheelbarrow the immature compost in between your garden rows or put it on a heap to incorporate in the fall. I think you can make a lot of compost and feed the chickens a ton of greens, if you can get 5-10 bags of clippings a week to dumped into the bins I think it would work.In the fall do the same with leaves as long as you put kitchen scraps in the bin to attract them.

Have you considered a chicken tractor?

Not being a chicken expert, the only thing I have to offer is to respectfully disagree that pallet bins have to be at least 4x4x4 ft to work, and that it's better to break apart pallets and use the lumber to make bins. I built a triple bin from pallets, about 3 ft high x 3 ft deep, the first bin larger than the second which was larger than the third. All told it was probably 6 ft long. Since it was all one unit, when completely full it was about 2 cu yds of compost pile. It worked wonderfully, and there was always finished material in the small third bin to use.

Pallets can be hard to break up. I did some cutting and trimming to fit them together, but used them pretty much as-is. T posts at the corners, and separate boards slid into slots on the front to make emptying easier. Swing-out doors would work fine too. Lined the sections with chicken wire to keep the compost in.

To secure the sides of my 3 bin system I used inexpensive gate hinges. 2 hinges per wall (one top and one bottom) made it easy to swing out the sides for shoveling and turning. If the wood rots or breaks, the hinges can be reused again and again. [_]_]_] to this \_]_[_/ or this \_\_/_/