Chickens picking through rabbit poo
Most people say, “Ewwww! Poo!”
Not chickens, though. Chickens say, “Oooooh! Poo!”
Well, they don’t really say this because their brains are the size of a peanut. A small peanut.
But their tiny peanut-sized brains looooove rabbit poo! Why? Bugs live in rabbit poo! Delicious, delicious, poo-eatin’ bugs. And there are hay seeds to pick out. Those are tasty. Think about all that wonderful nutrition just sitting there in rabbit poo.
Not that I’m going to start digging through poo to pick out the good stuff. I’ll leave that to the chickens. So here’s our nice little system:
Rabbits eat pellets and hay and greens and turn them into poo. They also drop hay to mix with the poo. Poo = nitrogen / hay = carbon. And this makes for a good composty balance. But then here come the potato bugs to live in the poo! Potato bugs are a pest. And hay seeds are a pest. Both these pests, though, are chicken treats. So when the worm pit gets too full of poo, we simply dump that poo into a kiddie pool (a poo pool, if you will), where the chickens scratch and turn and pick out all the little treats.
Given a few weeks or months, the chickens have pretty much exhausted the poo pile. They’ve taken out the stuff we don’t want and added their own poo. Let it compost for a few weeks to cool of that chicken poo and we’ve got some pretty dynamite compost.
It’s so nice to see everyone working together.
It’s the Poo’d Chain!
Pretty nifty! Our chickens free range and help themselves to the goodies beneath the hutches. They love it!
Thanks so much for the tip. We will start taking the contents of the rabbit cage to the hen house. I wonder if ducks like it too?
Wow…..Everything you always wanted to know about poooooo, but were afraid to ask!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really great info, actually. I will be glad to pass this along. Thanks.