There’s no getting around it. Much as we may love them, the chickens have started to smell of late. I don’t know why we didn’t notice it before; perhaps they didn’t smell earlier. Or perhaps we were so bowled over by the new additions to the garden that we were turning a blind nose to their shortcomings.

Either way, something had to be done, so we ordered some garlic powder and active bokashi from the Omlet store. The garlic powder, according to members of the forum, is very effective in combating the smell of chicken poo, while the bokashi, which is a high-fibre additive, helps to neutralise the acidity in the excrement before you drop it onto your vegetable plot. If you use it on a worktop composter it also helps break down the food waste before you put it out.

Chicken waste, of course, is an excellent fertiliser. You can add it to your compost to help it along, or dig it straight into the vegetable plot for a quick fix of growth boost. The trouble is, it’s highly acidic, and for a lot of vegetables that’s bad news. Most prefer to grow in pH-neutral soil, and while there are some that like slightly acidic matter, there are just as many that would prefer you drop them into something at least a little alkaline.

For the chicken keeper there are three solutions to this conundrum: (a) you don’t put your chicken waste onto the plot at all, which would be a terrible waste; (b) you dig lime into your plot to redress the balance, which of course is hard work; or (c) you add bokashi to your chickens’ feed to stop what comes out being so acidic in the first place.

So we’ve been feeding the chucks both garlic powder and bokashi since the weekend and the results are both remarkable and incredibly fast acting. Granted, they did smell of garlic a bit on the first day, but that has passed now, and when we open the coop each morning, or in the evenings when we check for eggs (they seem to lay during the day) the only smell is the wood shavings in the nesting box. It wouldn’t be going too far to say that it’s actually quite nice.

The dosing is incredibly simple. We just stir in a single teaspoon of the garlic with a full pot of feed, much as we do with the poultry spice, and add to this perhaps 50g of the bokashi. It takes no more time than a regular feed, but the benefit for the chickens is obvious: they can look forward to going to bed at night without worrying how their coop will smell.

And the benefit to us, I hope, will be an even better harvest next year when the plot has had a good 12 months of neutral, nutritious, natural fertilisers has been dug in.

Related posts:

1. The chickens go back undercover
2. How to grow garlic
3. Mucking out the chickens