Hot composting with chicken bedding and garden waste

[vehve]

Now the right side of the compost has finally started cooking too. The left side is looking all nice and brown, but it's not as hot as it was a week ago. Inside temp of the box still only reads 31C.

 

[aart]

Is it warming up over there yet?
We are having a thaw here, been in the 40'sF for the last 3-4 days and last night was the first night it didn't freeze.

 

[vehve]

Yeah, it was up to 8 C (46 F) yesterday, and sunny. Today it's overcast, but we should be getting nothing but sun for the rest of the week. I dug out the foundation for the rabbit pen yesterday.


It's amazing how the ground had thawed from the day before, we moved the raised beds a bit on Sunday and they were just frozen solid.

 

[ChristieB]

Well that does it, I'm getting my sons to pee in a bucket from now on!

As for the rabbit/water issue, around here rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, mice etc use bottle waterers, similar lines to nipple waterers for chooks,

 

[vehve]

Christie, welcome to the dark side

We've got her on one of those waterers for now, but keeping it thawed in winter will be interesting. She's not drinking very much now either, though.

 

[aart]

We've got her on one of those waterers for now, but keeping it thawed in winter will be interesting. She's not drinking very much now either, though.

Get 2 or 3 of them to rotate out. 1 or 2 can thaw while the other is out there freezing.

Just went thru this with chicks in the coop.
Built a beautiful heated waterer for the main flock, worked great!
Then let a broody hatch a half dozen so have been schlepping small bottle nipple waterers back and forth anywhere from every 1-4 hours.
Found a nice warm spot above the furnace to set the ones needing to thaw, don't fill them up too far and they'll thaw faster.

 

[vehve]

Small ones are handy because you can also just pour hot water on them to thaw them out. But I prefer solutions where I know I could leave the animals unattended for a few days and everything should basically be okay. If we go somewhere, we usually have the neighbors check on the animals, and I try to keep it so that they don't need to do too much while doing that. So I'm probably going to rig up some elaborate heated waterer for the bunny pen too, but there's still a lot of time until that becomes an issue.

 

[Amberjem]

 

[aart]

Small ones are handy because you can also just pour hot water on them to thaw them out. But I prefer solutions where I know I could leave the animals unattended for a few days and everything should basically be okay. If we go somewhere, we usually have the neighbors check on the animals, and I try to keep it so that they don't need to do too much while doing that. So I'm probably going to rig up some elaborate heated waterer for the bunny pen too, but there's still a lot of time until that becomes an issue.

Will look forward to what you come up with.
What did you do for chicken water this winter?(I should probably know, but d@mned if I can remember)

 

[vehve]

I have a heater cable designed for keeping water lines from freezing inside the waterer. At first I just put it in a uninsulated waterer, but that didn't work too well. Later I made an insulated waterer, it worked better, but we had a pretty warm winter so I didn't get to test it properly.







The heater cable plugs right in, and it's self regulating. The insulation between the two buckets is PU foam, the inner bucket has a layer of space blanket wrapped around it. The top insulation is aluminium coated PU foam board, the bottom only has a layer of space blanket, and three nipples screwed in.

*Edit* This was more of a proof of concept model. The cable in it is only 20W, I'd go with a 40W or 60W version on the next model. I'd also use a prettier outer bucket and make sure that the space between the two buckets on the bottom is tighter.