Cold months and having kits?

[Niele da Kine]

There would be some amazing compost for the spring garden under that bunny hutch, too! Do ducks have a 'hot' manure that needs to be composted? Chickens do, but I don't know how long it's supposed to be composted. If one knew how long chicken manure is supposed to compost, they could be taken out from under the rabbits about that long before the garden was planted and there's be the perfect compost for the garden. Bunny manure is the only fertilizer we use on our gardens, although a lot of that has to do with the cost of imported fertilizers.

Winter litters are perfect for spring gardens.

 

[Beekissed]

There would be some amazing compost for the spring garden under that bunny hutch, too! Do ducks have a 'hot' manure that needs to be composted? Chickens do, but I don't know how long it's supposed to be composted. If one knew how long chicken manure is supposed to compost, they could be taken out from under the rabbits about that long before the garden was planted and there's be the perfect compost for the garden. Bunny manure is the only fertilizer we use on our gardens, although a lot of that has to do with the cost of imported fertilizers.

Winter litters are perfect for spring gardens.

Duck is hot manure. If you just kept a running deep litter, composting it as you go along, you'd always have some that's ready for the garden. I've been doing that for years now, so no need to pile up poop and wait for it to be ready. In HI, you should be able to compost that easily all year round, right in the coop or rabbit barn. That's a win/win!

 

[Baymule]

@Niele da Kine I and several others practice deep litter in the chicken coops. I use leaves mainly, because in the fall, there are lots of raked up leaves at the curb for garbage pick up. We used to pick them up for chicken litter. Now, living on 8 acres we have plenty of our own leaves LOL. The chickens will scratch the leaves to bits, poop on them and make compost. You don’t exactly have “fall” leaves, but you have plenty of vegetation to use as chicken litter.

 

[Niele da Kine]

Nope, no fall leaves here! A friend of mine who had grown up on the mainland took his girlfriend to his parent's home one wintertime to somewhere in Illinois. They were driving out of the airport for about an hour and she was really quiet and he asked her what was wrong. She asked 'how big was the forest fire?" The only time we see trees without their leaves is after a fire and they're all dead.

We don't have chicken litter since the chickens here just kinda wander around. They have a mongoose proof box to lay eggs in and the rest of the time they just kinda go where they want. They're fenced out of the garden and chased off the porch. They sleep up in the trees and fly up there if they're chased by the neighbor's dog.

The bunnies don't have litter, either, since they're angoras and have wire bottomed hutches so their wool stays clean. Litter gets tangled in their wool and makes a mess. The sheep don't have litter since they've not cleared out enough grass for us to have an area to build their hut, but they won't get litter even then since hay runs around $38 a small square bale (50#?) and the feed store doesn't even bother to bring in straw. We may cut down some of the tall grasses and put them down for the flooring of their hut, but we can't build the hut until the tall grasses are eaten back.

So, we just scoop bunny manure from under the bunny hutches and spread it on the garden. It's mixed with the soil and not with any sort of vegetative litter.

The winter time litters get dried grasses, fresh grasses and the mum bun pulls wool for her nest. So that's almost like litter. In a couple more months - January, February and maybe March, it will be colder at night - down to the mid to lower fifties. Then we will line the wire bottom of the dropped nesting areas with carpet scraps or cardboard. Our 'winter' is delayed here because the ocean keeps everything at a pretty stable temperature but there's the tall mountain, Mauna Kea, which gets snow on top of it during the winter and at night the cold air from the snow rolls down hill. During the day, the sea breeze, our 'tradewinds', keep the cold away but they slow down or stop at night so it gets too cold for the baby bunnies without additional insulation.