Deep litter in your chicken house

  While cleanliness in next to godliness in the home, in the chicken house the direct opposite applies.  Constantly adding straw, hay, and leaves to the hen house and allowing it to compost, makes for healthier chickens.  The deep litter technique uses the same ideas as composting for dealing with the chicken wastes.  Microbes break down the poo, leaves, straw, and hay into compost that actually provides mega nutrients to the chickens as they scratch and peck.  The scratching and pecking effectively turning the whole thing encouraging decomposition.  When the floor gets high enough (about a foot deep)  you move all but the last few inches to the garden.  

Wanna read all about deep litter techniques? Then you have to read Harvey Ussery's book The small scale poultry farmer.  This book favors the old way of chicken farming, having the chickens on grassy areas, while containing them enough to protect your cultivated areas.  He includes basic chicken raising info from getting the chicks to slaughtering broilers.  This guy is THE guy to listen to if you are going small scale pasture raised. With his methods you can raise chickens in your garden to harvest eggs, compost your compostables, add nitrogen to the soil, cleanup your garden beds and to put a smile on your face!