Worm Barn Checkin - 2024 04 09

 


In early February I made an arrangement to collect rabbit droppings and used bedding from my friend. She has two bunnies who live indoors. They are housetrained and leave their droppings in a litter box. The bedding is a cellulose material and there is also straw in the mix.

We have organized a bucket brigade - I leave an empty clean bucket and pick up the full bucket of droppings. It's working out to be a weekly or bi-weekly swap. 


The material from the litter box is very dry. I soak it in the bucket for a few days before adding it to the worm bins so the material is moist and the microorganisms can begin their work for the worms to feed.

Today I checked on the worm bins and found a very lively worm community in the damp rabbit droppings mix. I layer the droppings between damp cardboard to provide brown compost. When I put my hands down into the droppings mixture, it was nice and warm, not hot.

At this point I have gone from one handful of worms and bedding last summer to nine bins. I am trying to use one bin as a nursery - to empty out worms and cocoons from the worm castings before I extract the castings. At this point, that nursery bin has turned into another worm bin. 

My approach now is to leave the worm castings side of each bin uncovered and make a nice, covered, moist food / bedding mix on the other side of the bin. My thinking now is that the worms are going to vacate the top inch of castings on the exposed side and I should be able to harvest castings by scraping off the top layer.

I am wondering if I need to keep a lid on my bins? I suppose the lids are a safeguard to keep the worms from escaping. None are trying to escape at this point. I think the worms would leave the top layer of castings uninhabited more readily if I didn't have a lid on the bin.




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