Neighbor Complaint- Stinky Yard. Advice??

[Compost King]

Keep compost pile away from standing water, it can get wet and actually needs moisture to compost correctly. My highest ground is where my compost pile is so it will never be in standing water. When you have exposed wet mature (which can happen even when doing things correctly) cover it with Straw. If you have exposed Manure in the coops cover it with your favorite bedding material and another issue that some over look is having water in a coop. If water spills in the coop and there is no airflow to the bottom of the bedding then ammonia will be created. Often an odor solution is as simple as keeping water outside of the coop area.

 

[ShannonR]

I would turn the compost pile well, and then cover it with black plastic. Let it cook awhile and break the stuff in there down.
Then I would clean out the coop and run, yard area, whatever, and spread DE around the area liberally. This may become a routine chore...

Also check for rotting eggs laying in obscure corners of the yard or whatnot, maybe you missed 1or two?

 

[Verbon30]

I would turn the compost pile well, and then cover it with black plastic. Let it cook awhile and break the stuff in there down.
Then I would clean out the coop and run, yard area, whatever, and spread DE around the area liberally. This may become a routine chore...

Also check for rotting eggs laying in obscure corners of the yard or whatnot, maybe you missed 1or two?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P4NV0ZM/?tag=backy-20
Might want to try this to get thew the summer.

 

[trumpeting_angel]

In the chicken's bedding you can use Stall Refresh (also sold as Coop Refresh, but much more expensive in smaller quantities). It is chicken-safe, unlike DE (which can cause respiratory problems in chickens and people). It is zeolite, or PDZ.

I agree with everyone encouraging more "browns" or carbon in the compost pile. Buy a bale of hay if you have no other source, although the office shredder is another option for urban chicken keepers! Mix/turn it well and fairly often. And maybe hold off on any more greens (kitchen scraps, chicken poop) for awhile.

What a great neighbor, to leave a kindly note instead of calling authorities! The neighbor problems one reads about here. . .

 

[aart]

What a great neighbor, to leave a kindly note instead of calling authorities! The neighbor problems one reads about here. . .

Was thinking the same thing...and wondering how long they waited to say something.

 

[Stepnout]

Powdered lime stone will sprinkled on manure keeps the smell down and ups the PH level. Chicken poo is very acidic.

 

[ChickNanny13]

PDZ on chicken poop is amazing

 

[wolfwalker]

I am going to offer one more suggestion. I have noticed in the past at certain times of the year my coop and the compost beds where the compost that were cold, not the right mix to heat it up properly, smell strongly. one of the things I have done that made an instant turn around and remove the smell is to now add charcoal to my litter. or in this case crushed up lump charcoal to the mix, you want it the size of a grain of rice for the most part. A bag of hardwood lump charcoal and it has to be true hardwood lump no additive charcoal, is around 11 dollars at lowes or home depot and will last about 3 months.

Just use an old metal vessel and an old hammer and crush the charcoal into as small as you can and spread it on the floor of the coop, along the run and turn it into the compost pile. The smell goes away in hours. After all, we have been using charcoal to remove odors from the air for years.

 

[Stepnout]

Powdered Lime is very very cheap and is amazing. A fine dusting works miracles on my field when I move the chicken tractor. Check this link out.
https://www.lime.org/lime-basics/uses-of-lime/enviromental/animal-waste/

 

[Hayduke27]

Thanks everybody for all your suggestions!!!! There is so much good information here I have many options I can try.

What I call my "compost pile" is more like a corner of the yard where I just dump everything and let the chickens scratch through it all. I have been doing this for years and never had much problem, but as I mentioned in my original post this spring when we dug into it for compost it had a much stronger odor than usual. We had a very big winter with a lot of snow this past year, and it's been far wetter this summer than usual. I highly suspect that the culprit is the unusually high levels of moisture combined with the fact that I have not been properly turning it. I am going to try giving everything a good turning. While doing so I am going to mix in a bale of dry straw. If I need to I could put a little lime on top when I'm done.

When I first got chickens, and during the subsequent years, I have handed out a lot of eggs to the neighbors and have always told them to please come to me with issues before going to the authorities. Overall, this plan has worked extremely well and is the only reason that I can still have a flock of 20 chickens (with a rooster!!) on Main Street in my little town BTW, for those who asked, the chickens "free range" in my yard and have quite a large amount of space to spread out. If you look into my yard in the heat of the day you wouldn't even know I had more than 6 chickens as they are all hidden under the bushes in the shade. I'm quite confident overcrowding isn't the issue.

Again, thanks so much for all the incredibly helpful ideas and I hope that others might find this thread helpful if they are having similar issues!!