All About Chicken Manure as Fertilizer (2024)

Chicken manure, also known as "black gold," is one of the best nutrient boosts you can give your soil. But not all chicken manure is created equal. You can buy bags of organic chicken manure at a garden center. Or, if you have neighbors who raise chickens organically, ask them for some of the manure. Here’s the scoop on why chicken manure is so good for soil and how to choose the best kind.

What Is Chicken Manure?

Also referred to as poultry manure, chicken manure is an excellent source of nutrients. Its nitrogen and phosphorus content is at least twice as high as other farm manures such as cow manure.

In addition to chicken droppings, chicken manure contains everything else that gets wiped up when a chicken coop is cleaned out, including urine, feathers, leftover feed, and coop bedding material such as straw and hay, pine or cedar shavings, grass clippings, shredded leaves, and recycled paper. That’s why the NPK ratio in chicken manure varies greatly.

The percentage of chicken feces and other materials is not the only variable in the nutrient content. The age of the chickens and the way the chickens are raised also play a role.

The Benefits of Chicken Manure

As a non-synthetic organic fertilizer, chicken manure has numerous benefits.

• Nutrients: It is a complete fertilizer that contains the macronutrients nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, as well as important micronutrients such as calcium needed for healthy plant growth.
• Soil amendment: Chicken manure is more than a fertilizer though. It is also a good soil amendment; it adds organic matter to the soil, which improves soil structure, moisture-holding, drainage capability, and aeration. Also, soil high in organic matter is less prone to erosion and retains fertilizer better.
• Microbe food: The organic matter in chicken manure has another benefit: it feeds soil microbes and allows organic nutrients to break down faster, making them available to plants more quickly.

The Difference Between Bagged and Fresh Manure

Chicken manure comes in two types: commercially processed in bags or fresh, and there are substantial differences in how to prepare and use them.

The bags you can buy at your local garden center are dried and pulverized or pelletized chicken manure. On a weight-for-weight basis, dried manure is more concentrated than fresh manure, which contains up to 76 percent water. Dried manure is usually sterilized and odor-free.

Fresh manure from a backyard chicken coop or a farm has a strong smell and may contain harmful pathogens such as E. coli or Salmonella. Unlike dried manure, it cannot be used as such; it must be composted or aged before it is applied, or else the high ammonia content will burn the plants.

How to Age Chicken Manure

Aging fresh manure will destroy harmful pathogens and reduce its ammonia content. The pathogens in the manure stop reproducing at temperatures of 140 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the temperature that can be reached in a compost pile, a common method of aging manure. Here's what to do:

1. Turn the compost pile with the fresh chicken manure weekly to introduce oxygen and shield it from the elements, as rain or snow will reintroduce more moisture.
2. Keep the compost pile with manure far away from your garden and other areas of your yard with human traffic, such as children’s play areas, to prevent contamination from the runoff.
3. Check the compost pile after five to six weeks. The resulting aged manure is more compact, drier, and lighter. The nutrients in it have been stabilized so they will be slowly released once you add the aged manure to your garden soil.

How and When to Apply Chicken Manure

Processed manure in bags is applied differently from composted aged manure.However, when applying any type of chicken manure, work it into the soil evenly and always wear gloves when handling manure.

Bagged Chicken Manure

Apply bagged chicken manure at any time. Trees and shrubs are usually fertilized in spring. Flower beds and vegetables are fertilized in the spring and repeatedly throughout the growing season. For specific amounts, follow the instructions on the label.

Aged Chicken Manure

If using composted aged manure, the timing for application is restricted depending on whether your crops are staked or not. Consider the expected harvest date of your crop and count backward to arrive at the application period. Usually, this translates into a late winter or early spring application for most locations. Here's how to apply aged manure:

• For trellised or staked crops where the fruit has no contact with the soil, such as tomatoes or beans, the manure needs to be applied at least 90 days before harvest.
• For crops that have contact with the soil—all root vegetables, strawberries, and leafy vegetables—the manure must be applied at least 120 days before harvest.
• Apply 45 pounds of aged manure per 100 square feet.