Finally, A Chicken Run that Doesn’t Stink, Gives Compost + Looks Great

Finally a beautiful chicken run that doesn't stink beautiful enough for the front yard that just below the surface of this deep mulch oh my gosh can you look beautiful beautiful compost fresh wonderful stuff here wonderful stuff today i'm going to show you this beautiful system where the garden feeds the chickens and the chickens feed the garden you're welcome mr cucumber first let's get some tools so i'm going to talk to you how to keep a static chicken run smelling fresh and giving you compost need a hard rake the shovel aha hard rake and are you kidding me where are all our shovels i have nicer ones than this but this one i'll show you how we built this thing with cedar non-toxic that lasts for a very long time forgot my water i'm going to show you how to manage these chickens in a system like this by the way four chickens will drink about a quart of water a day so 16 chickens will do a gallon so this this actually lasts a few days good morning the beautiful one you got any of these precious plants going out into your yes my sunflowers are going well not raised beds the raised beds are done oh um but in my herb garden okay the sunflowers flowers i've got a couple pumpkins that need to go out i probably need to pot up some things okay well i got some compost for you okay if you need it at least a little bit maybe a wheelbarrow load yes i'll let your chickens out is that okay or do you like to feed them before you let them out why is there another feeder in here oh i don't know will you get it out maybe maybe switch it because this one's all jacked up or not here we go oh honey can you pick that up when you're done it just looks not so good thank you one more thing to get for this demo all right hey you're up and adam got shoes on got your jacket man doing good i'll be happy to just have to help you with zipping your jacket all right we got a wheelbarrow but it's full of yeah it's full of holy cow squat and some wood chips but no problem we can just dump that into the chickens hey you want to ride i'll put another layer of mulch just to make sure you're not sitting in cow squat daddy what button do i hit this one yep moving wheelbarrows always works better with chandlers hey brown will you hold that door open for me please there's a little ledge a removable ledge for getting wheelbarrows in and out but it still holds the mulch up but let's see if we can just cross it oh yeah next time i'll just do this and i've got my path all right we keep that there to keep the mulch contained all right come on mr brown dump this out now i could throw any old thing in there there's manure and wood chips and these chickens will turn that scratch it they they want to do a lot more than just lay eggs they want to scratch all day they will put my work ethic to shame i know they they work from dawn till dusk i know because i live with them for 24 hours and they wore me out just watching them all right so first the idea of this thing chickens can be put to work in many ways in this way they're going to be making compost for us in a static run many of you have to have your chickens in a static run other ways are out into pasture uh fertilizing it with their manure or going behind cows and stirring the manure eating the fly larva this is a perfect system if you have to have a need it to be beautiful for a front yard and always always it's a good idea to have chickens next to a garden because like you saw earlier comp gar the chickens feed the garden with their compost you know they manure on this they scratch this and eventually it becomes compost we put on but the garden also feeds the chickens the extra stuff the spent stuff the the weeds all gets thrown into here and what they don't eat gets turned into compost we're walking on wood chips i feel like that's the easiest most effective deep bedding it's on about eight inches to a foot i put it on once a year we have an access guys you got to see how this is done first let's move our planter we'll get to that in a minute how'd you catch a chicken good job we have these nice gates where all you got to do is lift up on that and the gate goes open okay do both gates get in you're gonna have to hold them so they don't come out we've got both gates open why and we can open them all the way why well we got to get the material in here it's easiest to get it in what like a wood chip service or something like that like a tree service they can come and dump it in but how how do they get through this this pole has to be here to support these gates well watch this randolph our carpenter invented this are you lifting it oh you want to set that to the side gideon well there's water in there he got a plastic fence post that the four by four cedar happens to fit right into and it can be removable the trucks can come in and dump and then we have our supports for our fence more on the fence in a second let's finish this compost demo it took one full load of wood chips just typical uh tree service truck we piled it up in here we had that placed in the middle and then we just slung it out and took about 30 minutes look they're all up on it typically i would put that much mulch in every year once a year but before i would put that mulch in i would harvest compost all at once it's just batching or you could harvest compost as you need it so you saw me digging a little bit earlier let's get some of this actually we could use a shovel because this is fresh stuff this will break down over a year and the mulch will be much shallower but let's say you want to harvest some compost you just need a little bit of compost all right we're just getting the wood chips off it doesn't matter where you put it accidentally got some soil with that one it doesn't matter okay we're just getting us a harvest area i wondered for the longest time how do you harvest compost under a beet mulch system well this is how now hopefully that i'm showing you it makes sense it doesn't matter if you leave a little bit of wood chips in there we're gonna sip those out in just a second now we take our simple homemade just two by fours cut to the size of a wheelbarrow half inch wire mesh you could do a quarter i think i might actually rather do a quarter but we did a half inch wire mesh this time hardware cloth and just mounted it on there with poultry nails actually which is like a small u nail it's ready to go put the rim side up and i'm going to grab some of that compost and put it in here oh yeah look at the chickens going crazy for it they see it we don't see it what do you see in there honey what do you see what do you see what do you guys see in there now that we have our compost up here it's wet it's wet so it's probably gonna actually be easier to do this with this tool probably be better to do this on a drier day it's just rained for like four days but my motto is just plant you can do like that if it were drier i could do like this and it might make sense okay you just wait till you see what's going through here guys just wait just wait just hang with me the reason i would maybe do this early spring like early spring and get us some compost i would cover that compost that i harvested and use it throughout the season but i would want to build down my beds before adding more material you can harvest as you go but look i had to dig like a put hole you ready for the reveal guys if this were drier it would have done a lot better but we're gonna do what we got oh my gosh look at look at this beautiful stuff this is beautiful this is like free fertilizer like bulletproof your garden right here with this stuff hey beauty you got anywhere you want some compost do i have to pour it right now or can i pour it when i'm done will you be done today yeah yeah you want it right there beside is that sunflowers you're gonna put it on um that or i have some other things that i'm planting okay sure i'll just wheelbarrow out of here come get me when you're gonna do it oh my gosh really let's remove this this time i could have also ramped it up on both sides there's many ways i could do that i did that because this gate is automatic shut which is handy especially if you have kids speaking of which someone want to know what's kind of best best kind of chicken in here for i would say not an icelandic they're so scrappy they want to be out on like a free range system get your traditional bird in here like a black australarp a delaware uh buff orbington uh bard plymouth rock rhode island red pretty i mean anything just get you some chickens nice they like something from this wall this back i should know this beautiful compost rebecca did we turn that compost once which one this one the one i'm about to give you no did we buy it nope no all we did was get wood chips off of our farm uh and they dumped them in there we spread them we did do that and the and they they created this they created this it takes longer time than if we were to turn it and make a compost pile right but there it sits a little box nice a little bit of food for your sunflowers so how long does it take chickens to get fresh wood chips mulch wood chips it takes i'd say six months if you were starting from fresh and guys you can put this this could been on a lawn the chickens will eat the grass you could wait until the chickens have ate the grass then bring in the wood chips or either way that the grass will suffocate under the wood chips or the chickens will stir this up and eat the grass but a general rule of thumb is six months it's going to take about six months in a cold temperate climate where it actually rains like where we are here we get 40 inches of rain a year for them to break it down you don't get that much rain and you want them to break it down hose this down every once in a while now let's talk about chicken management and then we'll get to the build how this thing was actually built this is a 48 inches tall mostly some places it's you know we we had to go with the land so we had to drop it in some places so of course it's taller right here and right here but in general this is a 48 inch tall rail look she's found the manure she's digging in that cow manure i'm serious guys throw any organic matter in here manure food scraps weeds grass clippings anything it's a static run what if your chickens are jumping out i don't think these guys are i think our fences oh yeah it's okay it's okay if they are you can do it i've already clipped their wings that might be why well you only really need to clip one side but i'll do a demo on the other side so there's look at the difference here see how you go from long feathers to short feathers that's your mark it doesn't hurt them it's like clipping their fingernails i mean if you go too high up it could hurt them and draw blood but you see it's it leave the leave the feathers in there to decompose and add to the organic matter these guys have plenty of room mask maximum though what i believe you could get away with in a system like this is three square foot per chicken outdoor run now if you have more chickens you might need to add more wood chips than just once a year we just have what a dozen chickens in here and it's a pretty big area we could do 24 in here we're going to certainly probably raise our baby chicks in here just watch i mean if it smells it's time to add some more organic matter it doesn't have to just be wood chips it could be leaves it could be sawdust it could be pine shavings that from tractor supply are similar um what else could you put in here uh if you had organic straw any of those type of organic grass clippings now i wouldn't necessarily suggest building this until you've had chickens in one spot for three years because what if you change your mind this is hard to move we actually had our chickens in one here for like what rebecca eight years we've had them in our front yard for very long an electric mobile net it was a good thing because we moved it we tried different systems and then we finally finds then we found this this net stood here for a long time we're like okay let's go for it one thing's good about this is this can be a static run they can stay in that it's easy to maintain it's one of the easiest systems but you can also it could also be a holding they can come out of here and do a job these guys actually we would probably take three or four of them our plan is we're going to build a chicken tractor that fits right over our raised bed so that when this is done we put our chicken tractor it's going to be easy enough to lift with two people one person in the pinch we'll put the chicken tractor on here we would capture the chickens at night three or four of them and put them in that and work to work this in and get all the produce that we didn't get and to maybe add their uh manure and things like that you could move them out to a cover crop pasture to a big a big garden you want tilled uh you could move them out in the pasture during the growing season whatever this makes that all possible it can be just a their permanent place or can be just a holding and then you send them out on little missions like these guys i sent three of them out on our instant chicken garden like chickens did that guys this is our instant this is our instant chicken garden they did that we took three of those guys put them in a chicken tractor they tilled and fertilized the ground we moved them off we build a garden with just four inches of compost guess where we got it guess where we got this compost anybody guess the chicken the chicken run and we put down a weed barrier of paper and then we put down grass clippings from our yard and we seriously just planted these down into there that was it well we spread a little bit of amendments for acidic soil and our clay soil but that's it so what about predators for these guys well we put in one by six cedar at the bottom one to keep the mulch in from sliding underneath it would just look terrible if mulch slid out and and it just keeps it nice mowed lawn out there keeps our mulch in but also keeps the predators out they can dig under best practice would be to bury some hardware cloth you know dig down maybe a foot and bury some hardware cloth stapled to this and weigh it back down with the soil and then something can't dig through we don't have a lot of predator pressure here in our front yard plus we close them into their coop at night and by the way i have a coop and we this one's on the ground this is a frame design we put wood chips inside this will be moved but it's hard to move it's it's kind of buried in wood chips it's going to be a bit of a struggle to move should i try to move it now let's try to move it now that'll be entertaining oh and while we're at it what's this what's this pallet i put a pallet in here because they stir this wood chips and i don't want them to stir it into my water so if i have a pallet and i'll put the water in the middle one if they're they're they're not stirring anywhere near it and two they jump up there and have dirt or wood chips on their feet it drops off before they get to their water we were hoping this was just going to be a temporary because we want to put i think it'd be better to put a coop that's a bit off the ground like my mini me i think i'll put my chickshaw mini me because then the poop drops right down under the ground it's not buried in wood chips am i gonna even be able to move this thing i'm gonna have to dig that out this thing's kind of heavy as it is uh it's tried and true though it's an old coop we're using it up wearing it out making it do and doing how told you told you this is gonna work better with the camera hopefully the beautiful one watching watching she ain't paying me no mind there we go here we go here we go okay all right not too bad but no way here jonah's gonna do that all right now the chickens will spread this see our manure load here see why i'm voting for a more that'd be kind of like a patch a poultry pen where there's a floor where there's no floor i'd rather have a uplifted floor big wheels that i could just easily move that a kid could move so we talked about land predators but what about aerial predators grown chickens here don't really have that much pressure from hawks or similar but some people got hawks or eagles i would not be opposed to this being smaller or going all out and covering this whole thing and even having shade cloth in some area just to give them a nice cool place to go in the summer but then also real covering like 10 or something like that not only will this protect this from the moisture but then you got some more control of how this breaks down you can make it last longer or you could water it however you want to break it down and it could also serve as a predator control so if i had really high predator pressure i would very seriously consider making this a big cage you guys ready you've been waiting for this fence design well first i should speak to the these are nice we saw these on a gardening store i'll link some below they're not the exact kind we couldn't find them online but these are handy they just fit on a on a two by four and you just put potting soil in there and gosh guys i could have one every spot if you didn't have a lot of room you could grow so much food you would have your chickens here and you would have your gardens here and really that could be all that could be it you could do like the beautiful one and have beautiful planters outside of it too along the edges and you can have one everywhere we are inspired by this design we saw this at the biltmore house when our family went there uh they probably used a hair nicer uh cattle panel but this is just straight up cattle panel this is cedar lumber this is a cedar post because it's going into our ground we wanted something non-toxic we didn't want pressure treated because we're going to be harvested in this compost chickens will be eating and scratching there and it's going over there so we wanted something that would last not rot but it's also not toxic so you had your post you you put on your top both both sides goes right into the middle and then look how this is built so now i don't know necessarily the order we hired our carpenter randolph to do this we gave him the idea the inspiration and he went with it but you can see how this is built so you have the two by four on the inside you have one here why is this one here and is that a two by four no that's a two by four ripped ripped in half so it's like a one and a half ish and those are stripped and that is what's holding the cattle panel in somebody was asking well how do you hold this cattle panel in it's actually trimmed it see the cattle panel's sitting there and it's held in by the he put one of these in first you put the cattle panel against it and then you put this other one in and it holds your cattle panel now cattle panel is not going to keep a chicken in i mean maybe it would have right there that's a thinner net web there but we just put this poultry net because we're going to raise chicks here and this definitely keeps them in this is like a fortress and that's that's really how it's built what else can i show you oh we have it zip tied here we could have done metal wire but zip ties last a very long time metal wire might have lasted a little longer and maybe looked a little bit better at the bottom we put the one by sixes just to hold the mulch in keep the chickens in keep predators out that's it it really is that simple the gates these are very nice handy gates heavy duty bracing on all four corners it's got this spring latch you can open it from both sides so you can open it from the inside push it out or you can open it from the outside it always swings out we had sloping land so we went straight for a while and then had to drop it straight for a while and then drop it a professional carpenter it took a professional carpenter randolph a good week probably a good 40 hours to do this that's a lot of work it's a big investment but this is going to last 10 20 years and it's so little maintenance so little like with the the net it's great but we had in a permanent situation you have to go and readjust that it grounds out constantly from the mulch getting pushed on it gets pushed into your yard it's electric this is not electric it's like the power can go out we're all right this you don't have to check the fence to see if it's hot this is just like yeah you pay for it up front you work for it up front but then it's easier to maintain over the long run there you have it folks hopefully i can inspire and have taught you guys a thing or two about my no stink compost making chickens feed the garden garden feeding the chickens system that's beautiful enough for your front yard it doesn't have to be exactly like this you can mimic this in many ways uh the principles apply just make sure you've got deep bedding and have your gardens and chickens work together and you got it in this video i was actually answering questions that i posed to my do-it-yourself abundance member area we just launched that in the spring for our main registration but guys many people don't know that i actually keep a free trial open all year round now yes that's just for the standard level that's not premium but you can get in and try our videos our library of 200 plus videos more info on stuff like this gardening permaculture chickens homesteading and you can even get access to the private facebook group which is where i posted this i think we got over probably nearly three dozen questions and i'm answering the members questions but also giving you guys great content but if you guys want to get in on that it's a free trial link for that down in the description