I love interlocked systems. Complete—if complex—loops. When the effluents provide the materials necessary to produce the influents. Chickens, I'm finding, are great at that. You can buy feed for them, and they produce eggs, and poop. So you can buy chips to put down in their coop, and then rake up the poop/chips frequently. And your food scraps can go in the trash—and everything is a broken loop. Or you can save your food scraps (and your neighbors' food scraps) and feed them to the chickens; and they'll produce eggs and poop; and you can mulch your leaves (and your neighbors' leaves) and put it down in their pen. And keep adding it until you've got a nice deep litter of living organisms, essentially turning the floor of the pen into a compost pile. Now the poop isn't a problem to be dealt with; but a useful product they give you.
They tie back into other aspects of the property: we've got enough trees that we need to take one down about once a year to keep them from threatening neighbors property or the house. So I could pay someone to haul off the wood for me. Or I could burn the wood, not need a gym membership as I get a work out cutting wood; then not pay to heat the house. Interestingly, the ashes produced in this process are a great source of carbon, and can be collected when they cool and put in the chicken coop (they are most abundant in the winter when the leaves are no longer available as bedding), and they keep the composting process trucking along. I'm experimenting this year with swiping the neighbors' bagged leaves (with their permission) and storing them in the back woods where I used to haul off my leaves. The bags seem to be keeping up through several significant rains now: they seem to shed most of the water and, since they aren't fully water or air tight, they seem to allow the leaves to dry out from any dampness that's gotten in when the rain stops. Once I've dealt with all my leaves by mulching them and adding them to the coop I'll drag out out a few of the neighbors' leaf bags anytime the coop starts smelling like it needs a bit more carbon (i.e. starts smelling like ammonia) and mulch them up and add them in.
Back to the feed comment: I have not cut out the need to buy feed. But saving my food scraps, and giving them food scraps from friends and neighbors, and giving them limited free ranging time, and throwing all the weeds, grass clippings (thanks neighbors!), and whatever other organic matter I can find into the coop does significantly cut down on the amount of feed I have to buy. I'm hoping to grow more things specifically as chicken feed next season and that will further cut down on the still-slightly-open-loop on the feed side.
