Red Hens as Composters

Thanks to Pat Foreman's excellent new book, City Chicks, we have learned a lot about how chickens can play a key role in processing food waste into compost. Here is a picture from Saturday when the kids gathered up a lot of food waste from our kitchen and brought it out to the chickens.

So far, their favorite foods are, in descending order:

1. pizza crusts

2. watermelon rinds

3. rotten tomatoes

4. rotten apple slices leftover from the kids' lunches.

The kids had an idea that the chickens might really like rotten pumpkins and that we should gather up as many as we can after Halloween. I like that idea.

They also had the idea that we could fashion a leash out of string and tape and then take one of the chicks for a walk downtown. I don't like that idea.