Brown gold! Rabbit manure
One benefit to keeping rabbits is
the wonderful and rich manure they produce. While rabbits may not
produce manure in quantities that some other livestock will produce,
the manure is all produced in a localized area, assuming they are kept
in pens/hutches. This makes it trivially easy to gather and
use. We plan to improve upon our collection area soon so that
there will be a plastic or sheet metal catchment that will direct the
manure into a basin or barrel. We have a few ideas on how to
accomplish this and it will be an interesting project we can report on
later.
Many different sources claim that rabbit manure does
not need to be aged. I have heard this common wisdom for many
years, but am only just now ready to start putting it to the
test. The gardening here has been slowing down due to the
oppressive heat of mid-late summer, and most recently due to lack of
time. However, Dawn and I will soon be transplanting some citrus
trees (Satsumas, Mandarin Orange, Kumquats, Kaffir Lime) once fall is
here in full force and we will be using much of the accumulated manure
to enrich the soil around the newly transplanted trees. By the
time spring rolls around we also plan to really put the manure to the
test when the vegetable garden will be at full throttle again.
Rabbit manure is claimed to
have an excellent nutrient content. I'm no manure expert, but
I've seen several sources which list it at an average N2.4
P1.4 K0.6. We'll have to research which types of plants that
ratio is best for but I'd guess it's suitable for most.
We learned early on that we
needed to build a fence around the bottom of the cage to keep the dogs
out. They were enjoying digging in and sometimes snacking on the
manure. The barrier also keeps them from nipping and sniffing at
the fuzzy bunny feet at the bottom of the cage. When the rabbits
first showed up here the dogs were intensely curious and would stand on
hind legs to sniff at the new creatures invading their territory.
Dawn built a handy removable frame which allows easy access to the
underside of the cage while still keeping the dogs out. It may
not be obvious from the photo, but the front of the cage pulls out in
mere seconds to allow full and easy access making it easy to shovel the
manure.
Lately, things have been
quite busy here and we haven't been able to keep up with things as much
as would be ideal. Therefore, the manure has been accumulating
and there is some grub or maggot that has started invading our precious
store of manure on the ground. It's time for us to get busy with
the shovel and make use of the brown gold! Also in that vein, we
started contributing our rabbit posts weekly but quickly had to fall
back to every other week. Things have been quite busy for the
last couple of months on the verge of overwhelming due to unfortunate
termite discoveries, mechanical breakdowns, and a number of other
things including a needed trip out of town all piling up at once.
I certainly have more admiration of the commitment it takes for folks
to keep up with a regular blog schedule despite the busy pace that life
sometimes presents (I'm looking at Anna and Mark here... 
).
Shannon and Dawn
will be sharing their experiences with raising meat rabbits on Tuesday
afternoons. They homestead on three acres in Louisiana when time off
from life and working as a sys admin permits.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Ive certainly used rabbit manure straight in the garden with no ill effect. We call those little pellets "bunny pops". My sister in law, a city gal, was horrified. She brought over a lollipop shaped like a bunny head and said "THIS is a bunny pop!"
I like that. Seems people have lots of names for the manure...
And many more that I've read that I can't recall.
Also as a note, I've seen some other references that rate rabbit manure as high as N4.8 P2.8 K1.2 but I used the numbers that were listed at an .edu site as probably the most trustworthy. But in every listing I've seen, Rabbit poop seems to come in second only to Bat Guano with the added bonus that it doesn't have to be composted.
Please be very careful with dogs and rabbit hutches.
As a child, my husband raised rabbits for his magic act.
He was devastated when he came home to live rabbits whose feet had been eaten by dogs. He's never told me much more than that, but I imagine that his father put the rabbits out of their misery. He did not ever keep rabbits again.