This might sound funny but I am serious. The Manure thread made me think of this question. Can I safely compost my pet rabbit's potty box? She is supplied with pine pellets and uses the potty pretty much exclusively. Can I compost something that includes her urine? How about the pine shavings below. Often there are rabbit droppings there, but also alfalfa pellets, and other rabbit food delights. Could I be possibly tossing out valuable yard material in our trash each week??

Lots of people treasure rabbit manure as among the most highly prizes of manures for the garden. Yes, definitely use that stuff!! @Trish wants rabbits and I'm keen to get them solely for the manure they'll produce.

Yay for rabbit poop! And so the potty with the pine and urine mixed in is OK? I will feed my bunny more food. She eats better than most of us.

The potty will be high nitrogen. This is urea and plenty of gardeners use it as a nitrogen source. Pine needles are used in many gardens and although some suggest that they will acidify your soil, I think the effect is no greater than using oak leaves. We use pine needles as much as possible.

Awesome news! Thanks Dave! I will look at this pet chore in a whole new light! We have a lot of pine trees and use the needles. And when the Oaks drop, I will be mulching them up and used as leaf mulch as much as I can.

@Dave and @Trish, if you are considering raising rabbits for food, I'd do it now while your kids are young. The fun part is you always have baby bunnies to play with (the turn around time is pretty short as I recall). You will also enjoy a lot of beautiful rabbit pelts to mess with. I used to make little hand muffs out of them.

Rabbits are currently #3 on the TODO list

#1 and #2 (the chicken palace and the greehouse) should be completed this fall/winter.
It does look like we will be having a very very busy spring, so we'll see when the rabbits actually get done. It will happen sometime soon, though!

Back in Connecticut we raised (way too many) rabbits (with stealth, cunning and superior fly control in a suburban back yard) and added all the manure, urine and bedding to our compost bins and from there to the gardens. Our rabbit cages were not on legs, we had them all hanging to make it easier to clean underneath.

We had the biggest, baddest veggies in the neighborhood.

We did have one little guy that was our house bunny; his name was Fred.

Very Cool!

@Bonehead
It's time for me to make one of my dyslexia reports:
When I read what I thought were your words:"You will also enjoy a lot of beautiful rabbit pellets to mess with. I used to make little hand muffs out of them."

See, I thought you were making the hand muffs of the little bunny droppings - 'pellets' not pelts - nice, warm hand muffs, but messy.

There is a Yahoo group dedicated to bringing bunny poop producers and bunny poop users (gardeners) together:

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/gr...

Dave and Trish, when you do get the rabbits we defiantly want to hear about your adventures in rabbit keeping.

I have a friend who has willingly taken on the task of cleaning her neighbor's rabbit hutches. She brings home trailer fulls of rabbit poo for her garden. Although she generally does not share as she has four acres of gardens, she gave me a couple of bags to experiment with this year, with the warning that I have to find my own source next year.

She generally lays down a fairly heavy layer of poo at this time of year in her vegetable garden and then covers it with her mulching materials. Her vegetable garden is the most productive garden in the area. Her results have made me a believer.

I won't see the results in my garden until next spring, but I have no doubt that the rabbit poo will enrich the soil.

Smiles,
Lyn

Growing up we raised rabbits (300-1,000) , mostly for food and some show. Great compost for the garden. We had a very large garden and used every bit .also grew the largest rhubarb just behind the rabbit lot .
If killing and eating rabbits isn't appealing to the kids, consider angora rabbits They take more work but reward you with ''wool'' fiber that has a lot of uses for the homecrafter.

edited for spelling

another vote for rabbit manure. They are so much like goats and very easy (well easier than horse manure which I love) to deal with. yes by all means recycle that wonderful gold, and your flower/veggie garden will be to die for by your neighbors....

Had a friend that use to raise meat rabbits for those of us who fed raw diet to our dogs. I love it, would pick up once a week, and she didn't use anything that I didn't want in my dogs... very safe and the dogs (and DH loves rabbit) were crazy about them.

Looking forward to hearing about your adventures next year with the rabbits.

My aunt and uncle tried to raise them to sell to a local butcher but when it came time to do you know what it made my uncle so sick he couldn't so they only lasted a year in the rabbit business.

Rabbit raiser here! And ditto what everyone else said, use the poop!

I spent years raising meat rabbits (I recommend New Zealand Whites for good meat production, Dave/Trish) and they provided meat, fur, and manure. I never made any mittens or muffs like you did, bonehead, but just salt-cured the pelts and used them as "doilies" (anyone else remember what those are?) or would give/sell them to friends to do with as they wished. Now I have some cross New Zealand/San Juan rabbits I'm working with.

All in all, shadygreenthumb, jump on that excrement (well, not literally)! It's great to have a pet that pays its rent in some form or fashion, eh?

Shoe

Thanks for all the hints from rabbit lovers! Mine is a pet and definitely off limits for eating! I am going to empty Pepper's potty into the garden, then turn it over along with the new leaf mulch that will go down starting this month. One question, there is no odor, right? I would hate to disappoint my neighbors. They are already so patient with all our critters.

Well it IS poo. That said, if you don't let it build up too thickly before spreading it, I think you won't be overwhelmed by it. If you only have one rabbit, that should be very manageable.

I am going to safely assume since the pine pellets absorb the odor while in the house, it will help with odor in the flower beds, too.