Backyard Chickens And Lawn Fertilizer

The antics of chickens are part of the joy of raising a backyard flock.

Backyard chickens and lawn fertilizer.

Another is alphalawn made from alfalfa. Manure from free range chickens can break down naturally in the yard providing valuable nutrients for the lawn. Just read the label to see what is the source of the fertilizer. Many of the plants that we call weeds are plants that chickens love chickweed dandelions wild strawberry violets and clover.

Scotts organic choice is made from feather and blood meal. The correct balance for free range chickens is about 250 square feet of space per chicken. There has to be a balance between the size of your lawn and the size of your chicken flock. Even if your fertilizer is organic the amount of nitrates and phosphorous found in the soil can be enough to cause problems in certain birds.

Chickens are beneficial to an organic lawn by mowing it with their grazing ability eating any insects and worms in the lawn and leaving their manure as a precious fertilizer. Chicken manure is a superstar for composting. Rather than fertilizing with conventional fertilizers put your chickens to work. A complete natural organic lawn food will have low npk nitrogen phosphorus potassium numbers most always below 10.

They can also reduce your need for herbicides depending on the type of weeds you have and the chicken to lawn ratio. There s a local fertilizer out of longmont called richlawn and it s made from ground up chickens perhaps not the most appropriate but it would be an option. Alternatively a small amount of chicken poop is an effective fertilizer. There is no better fertilizer for your lawn than what your birds are already producing.

Left unattended the compost will be ready for use as fertilizer in 6 12 months. In fact their poo is high in nitrogen and it also contains potassium and phosphorus. Quality organic fertilizers will contain meal based nutrients bone meal feather meal blood meal fish meal or some may contain poultry litter. In the small confines of a chicken run the swift layering buildup of chicken poop smothers and chemically burns the grass obliterating anything growing in a new run within a week.