RABBIT MANURE SOLAR OVENS?
I have my reasons!
One incredible byproduct of raising rabbits is that you have an almost endless supply of rabbit manure. Rabbit manure is an excellent fertilizer and, as an added bonus, it is a cold manure. This means that you can use it as is and apply it to your plants immediately with no composting required. Many other manures, like chicken or horse, are known as hot manures. These will "burn" your plants if applied directly to them without composting them first, so there is a waiting period between collection and application.
My issue is that we feed our rabbits a good amount of plant material, including Bermuda Grass. I want to use this rabbit manure down on our land when I am planting our trees and garden plants, but I do not want to accidentally be planting undesired plants in the process. In this video I share what my plan of action is.
THE RABBIT MANURE SOLAR OVEN VIDEO
PHOTOS OF THE BASIC PROCESS
When you wind up with this much rabbit manure, you want to make good use of it. However, if undesirable seeds are mixed in with the manure, should you still use it in your garden?
Personally, I think so, but I also have a plan on how to prepare it. As a seed saver, I know that seeds should be stored properly. Basically, when you are storing seeds to plant next year you want to make sure that your storage area meets three specific criteria.
- Dry
- Cool
- Dark
You are going to want to store your seeds in a dry, cool, dark area. Some people used mason jars and then place their seeds in a root cellar or even a refrigerator. Others pick a low-humidity area in the basement or other cool location. The reason for this is simple. In general, three things can ruin your seeds and prevent them from sprouting.
- Water
- Heat
- Sunlight
If seeds get too much of these, they may never be able to grow. Since the rabbit manure is mixed in with Bermuda Grass seeds, I thought that a "solar oven" may be a good way to destroy the seeds.
I have a good supply of 275 gallon tote liners, with are basically industrial strength, over sized garbage bags.
I can easily fit five or six five gallon buckets of rabbit manure in the bottom of each of them.
Since the buckets do not have any holes in them, they hold liquids too. After we placed the buckets in the plastic, we filled them with water.
Once the buckets were all full, we wrapped up the tote liners tight and secured the end.
Now comes the next step in this experiment. We will allow the buckets to sit in this wet, warm, and sunny location for a while and see if we can't render the Bermuda Grass seeds useless. If so, we can continue to feed out rabbits like we do and still be able to use all of their manure without fear of planting Bermuda Grass in our garden and on our property.
Ideally, one day we will be raising our own rabbits on our own land and using the specific plants that we will grow for our rabbits as fodder, but for now, we like to not be wasting anything, including the lawn waste. The reel mower does a great job collecting the cuttings and they rabbits sure do love them.
Hopefully "cooking" our manure in these solar ovens will solve our dilemma for now. We'll keep you posted!
As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:
proof-of-rabbit-manure
Until next time…
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the post you share is very useful for the farmers. Your initiative is very useful for the community of course
Thank you!
That shit is amazing for growing pot too!
Super interesting. Your homesteading posts are awesome papa. Thanks!
Thank you very much for the encouragement. I am just trying to learn, explore, and apply, and sharing along the way!
That is a lot of poop! But I didn't know you could use it directly on your plants that comes in handy compared to the smell of hot manure. Thanks again for the awesome homestead tip will be using these when I get my acreage I can't wait!
There sure are plenty of good things to learn ahead of time. Keep working towards that goal!
Hey, @papa-pepper! When you have a lot of rabbits, you get a lot of rabbit poop. At one point in my past life, I was raising over 400 rabbits for meat. That's a lot of rabbits! So, I literally had tons of rabbit poop. Sterilizing the poop is a great idea for the garden, but finding an inexpensive large scale method for tons of poop is a daunting task. So, what we would do is small scale, similar to what you are doing for your garden, for use in our smaller house hold garden, and the larger amounts were spred in our fields in the fall, let sit over winter then tilled numerous times before actual planting. Keep on trucking papa! The homestead is taking shape!
That is a lot of rabbits, so far we have only had about a tenth of that!
Just wait @papa-pepper! It's coming. They multiply very quickly and before you know it you have hundreds of the little floppy eared critters. lol
@papa-pepper would wrapping up those buckets in a transparent liner not cause a greenhouse effect and cause the seeds to germinate instead?
I like this post to help the farmers for fertilize their fields,
It is a great fertilizer for any farmer or gardener. Thank you!
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wow ... very interesting! I live in open country, usually in fields, vegetable garden and plants we use other types of fertilizer.
I was very impressed with your post and the work you are doing ... congratulations!
This is great. Animal manure is a natural way to use as a fertilizer to plants.
A great natural way to help them grow!