12 tonnes of chook poo - where to put and best practice composting

[Jemski]

Hi permafolk

We're getting ready to put in our first big garlic crop at our little intentional community farm. Exciting times!

We are getting 12 tonnes of chook manure delivered this weekend. We looked for poo from an organic farm but apparently it is impossible to find and got advice from a local organic farmer that we can buy conventional chook poo and, as long as it's properly composted (to 65-70 degC) for 4 - 6 months, then the toxic chemicals inc hormones will be broken down and it is OK to help the organic garlic along.

Any advice would be much much appreciated on:
1) Where should be place this pile in our permaculture plan? Presumably it will go in our 'zone 3' paddock where we plan to do commercial growing and put the garlic crop. Not on the top of a rise? Far away from the river? All in 1 pile or spread across a few piles? Do we need to put it on a patch where we we don't plan on growing food in the future? We're in the Barringtons so get quite a high rainfall so I'm concerned about chemicals leaching out before the composting takes place
2) Any advice or links on best practice composting for such a large amount of animal poo?

Thank you so much!!!
Jemma

[9anda1f]

Nice ... wishin I had 12 tons of poo.

From my deep dark memory, I'm recalling that for hot composting the proper mixture of nitrogen (chook poo) to carbon is 1:30.
That would make ... um ... 360 tons of carbon to mix with your pile??!!! Wow. (where's that "total shock" smiley when I need it?)

[eco4560]

Compost calculator

It's in imperial, but it'll give you some ideas about how much of what you need to get to the magic 30 to 1 ratio.

Have you got a machine to turn your pile? Or a very large group of very hungry WWOOFers? This will determine the size of your pile - minimum of 1 cubic metre - maximum of what you can turn before you need to have a good lie down. To make a true hot compost you will need to turn it every few days - once the temp of the pile starts to drop it is time to turn it over.

Ideally cover the pile(s) to keep the rain out to avoid leaching or the temperature dropping. You should put it either close to where your compost making supplies are, or close to where it will be used to avoid making extra work moving it. You can put it on the ground you intend to plant into - it'll 'burn' out the weeds below it and send the worms into a feeding frenzy.

Geez that's a lot of poo.....

[Grasshopper]

We used to get about 4 tonne of chook poo dumped in the driveway of suburban Melbourne once a year for a few years (maybe 30 years ago it was so cheap just the cost of the truck, the farmers were happy to get rid of it back then )
We would compost it then apply
Made lots of teas too
you could smell it a few houses away and the rats loved it, a few dead chickens and eggs in the mix

[andrew curr]

where are you
ya can probably get some sawdust old newspapers ect to act as your carbon source/absorb ouders
i once had a large Korean woofer who could turn a pile like that in a few hours and then want more!

[andrew curr]

just read your post Barringtons (get one of the malcom nadens to help)
seriously crusher dust is a good additive to get air into the pile and there are heaps of sawmills down that way who virtually give carbon away
almost a bit late for this years garlic crop but better late than never