Vermicomposting Questions

Forever now, I've been threatening to get some worm beds started under the cages. The worms are super spendy, and until all of my cages are permenantly situated, I didn't want to fork out the cash.

Today, our homeschooling group met at the OSU garden. They have four HUGE vermicomposting bins and an older woman working in them. I started talking to her and she gave me about a gallon of the compost with worms (tons and tons) for free.

So, anyhow, I came home and drilled holes in a rubbermaid tub for drainage and air, added newspaper and some rabbit poop and wet it slightly. Then I put the worms and compost over that and covered with some more shredded newspaper and dampened that some. Does this sound right? Any suggestions? How much poop can I add? The woman that was there told me that they couldn't survive with rabbit poop (too hot), but I know that they can. My issue now is the ratio of newspaper, poop, and water and if I need to add anything else (lol, a balanced diet). Any advice would be appreciated!

Have you seen the thread down in "other ways to profit" ? http://rabbittalk.com/vermicomposting-worm-beds-using-rabbitpoo-t122.html. Has quite a good tutorial and tips and tricks. Even got me thinking about doing the worm thing.

in a bin you need to watch the urine content of the poop. I think (not sure) the people rinse the urine off...or at least well drain it.

Oops, I didn't see it, but headed over. Perfect! Thanks!

I rinse my urine out in the small winter worm bin ... in my main composter (loaded with earthworms) I don't and they seem fine but they have quite a few choices for meal time

pfaubush":9sr5m73n said:

So, anyhow, I came home and drilled holes in a rubbermaid tub for drainage and air, added newspaper and some rabbit poop and wet it slightly. Then I put the worms and compost over that and covered with some more shredded newspaper and dampened that some. Does this sound right? Any suggestions? How much poop can I add? The woman that was there told me that they couldn't survive with rabbit poop (too hot), but I know that they can. My issue now is the ratio of newspaper, poop, and water and if I need to add anything else (lol, a balanced diet). Any advice would be appreciated!

Click to expand...

As I'm sure you found out, the thread suggested has oodles of good info! I feed my worms nothing but bunny balls (and a bit of hay/straw that got mixed in) and the worms thrive on it. I do soak and drain the manure first; it helps with the decomposing so it doesn't heat up as much (I think) and it dilutes the any urine. I keep my worm bins in our cold room and I haven't yet had an issue of the bin warming up too much but I do keep a close eye on it after adding new manure. The worms will tell you when they need food, there's none left! They say a pound of worms will eat 1/2 pound of food a day. My big bin that holds approx. 1 1/2 pounds of worms eats more than that. I give them rabbit manure from two 6 rabbits and assorted litters (up to 24 kits)every third day. I don't used shredded newspaper, I use dead leaves I've soaked and drain and I seem to get more worm eggs which means more worms. As far as ratio goes, I have 6 - 8 inches of bedding, then 2 - 4 inches of manure and another 3 - 4 inches of bedding. I do rotate the leaves from top to bottom when I feed the worms if I notice the bottom a litter wetter than I like, the top dries out faster. I am not an expert by any means but I do have a labal for vermiculture on my blog if youwould like to read about my successes and failures. Here is the link to my latest entry on the worms.
http://wwwmindwanderings.blogspot.com/2 ... tings.html
Good luck!