Chicken feed

[mike houlihan]

Does anyone know where that chicken waste could be used for fish food?  I was told this is taking place down in some of the islands. I'm ready to go out and buy chickens

[TCLynx]

Fresh chicken waste should NOT be used in an aquaponics system.  There are places in the world where people use fresh manure to cause algae blooms in extensive pond culture but those are not aquaponic systems and people are not eating raw lettuce or other veggies out of those ponds!!!!!!  People cook those fish before eating them!

Chickens can carry pathogens that we don't want in our lettuce or other raw eaten veggies.  DO not use fresh manure to grow veggies that will be eaten raw.  If you put manure into the fish tank of an aquaponic system to feed the fish, you are essentially contaminating your aquaponic system with potentially pathogen laden material and there is no way to guarantee that it won't be taken up into the lettuce/spinach, etc and cause some one to get sick.  We don't want to risk that.

[Jon Parr]

There is a way to keep chicken waste in the system safely. Chickens are efficient users of food, so their waste is pretty well spent, carbohydrate-wise. You can compost and age their manure, let worms fiinish it off, then feed worms to fish and make worm tea as a foliar spray for plants. I feed my chickens way more than they can eat (kitchen scraps from a local diner), and each day or two we  shovel all the shut and uneaten food into a BSFL bin. The BSFL then feed the chickens directly, and the duff left over from the BSFL gets added to the worms. Chickens are a great asset to any home. I can't imagine life without them. 

[TCLynx]

Yes Jon, as long as the system is bigger than just letting your chickens poop in your fish tank.   Please don't let you chickens poop in your fish tank.

Compost the chicken manure before you use it directly to grow your food.  Compost all warm blooded farm animal manure (including the human animal manure) before using it to grow your food.  I really believe all warm blooded animal manure should be composted and kept on the property to enrich the soil.

But it should be WELL composted before coming into any sort of contact with an aquaponics system.

[Jon Parr]

Yep, I should have made that more clear. My chicken coop and BSFL bin are nowhere near fish or plants. BSFL husks are months old before worms get them, worm castings are months old before tea is made, and tea is brewed with huge aeration and dilution before plants get sprayed. BSFL, for me, are integral to chickens recycling their own waste. It seems to me the maker of the biopod said he puts in 100 lbs of pig feces in per day, and gets out 20 lbs of BSFL larva per day, which the pigs consume (memory talking there, hope that's the right figure). Don't know what the ratio for chicken might be, but in my case I get a lot of uneaten food as well. Works well for my case, and I feel safe about the composting time and process. Do you agree TC?

[TCLynx]

As long as you are composting I'll let you make your own personal decisions about time and temperature on your own farm.

I'm just very quick to jump in whenever I hear people wanting to let their chickens or rabbits poop directly into the aquaponics to feed their fish.  THAT is not a good idea in my Book.

[Robert C Beck]

We want chickens too. It would be nice to close the loop but I have to agree with TC and Mr Parr here. By the way you are in Orlando and we are as well. We are trying to relocate some of our stock to do a system reconfigure. Do you know anyone local looking for Tilapia for a new system?