chicken poo-onics

[mpmace]

Does anyone know of a study of using chicken poo in the water instead of fish?

[GaryD]

Hi,

What you're suggesting is something that some Asian farmers do. They install chicken housing over their ponds so that the chickens fertilise the ponds for rice and carp production. On a backyard scale it might be problematic.

You could take the chicken manure and put it into a vermiponics system (as proposed by mornings). You can read more about using composting worms in place of fish here....and here.

mornings is seeking a consistent and predictable nutrient production (he's a commercial vegetable farmer) so he uses fermented rabbit food as the food source for his worms.

There's no reason, however, why you couldn't do a similar thing with chicken manure. I'd recommend that you ferment that, too......to take the heat out of it, to minimise the odour and to maximise its take up by the worms. Remember, in such systems it's the worms that mineralise the manure so that it releases its nutrients for the plants.

Gary