A Bunny Poop Circle of Life Photo Essay

I make my own soil for container gardening, and a critical component is poop. I feed my Eisenia fetida worms the house rabbits' poop and other organic waste, and the worms digest it down to worm castings. The worms even eat junk mail and cardboard.

First, the bunnies do their thing. In large volumes, every day.
The droppings get filtered out with a cat litter scoop. I avoid the urine-soaked bedding- it can hurt the worms. The dry bedding is ok, though. I compost the urine-soaked bedding separately- it's high in nitrogen.
The worms get fed their favorite food. To Eisenia fetida, bunny poop is ice cream. This bin needs some fresh bedding on top, but there is no odor and the worms are crawling all around it, so the bin is well-aerated and healthy.
It all gets digested, and redigested, into this fabulous stuff-- worm castings. The more times it passes through the guts of the worms, the better it becomes.
Finally, the castings go to the plants. I use my castings for everything- even my seedling start mix. Then, the plants feed us and the rabbits. See? Circle of life. Or as I like to call it, the Bunny Biosphere.
The stars of the show. See the little kid worms in the middle of the picture? There are probably 40,000 worms between my two bins.

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!

Today is Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. (Bows head in reverence.)
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Towards the end of his long and amazing life, Darwin was finally able to devote himself to a lifelong interest- the biology and function of earthworms. While still in his thirties, he was certain that earthworms performed a key role in soil biology, though he was unable to spend time on what he called his "hobbyhorse" until old age. His last volume is still considered one of the best studies ever written on earthworms, called "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations of their Habits". It was published in 1881, one year before his death. The entire book is available on-line here.

Well, looky here...

(So... cold....)

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I went out on the porch at lunchtime to bring in one of the flower boxes. I want to grow some baby Asian greens indoors this winter, under my seedling lights. Lately, I'm craving Asian greens like crazy. I'll settle for even just a leaf or two at a time, chopped fine, for garnish on a hot, buttery, salty baked potato. Mmmm, piping hot potatoes in winter...

Anyway, the still dirt-filled flower boxes are stacked on each other, and they are pretty well frozen, too, except in the drainage crevasses on the undersides of the pots. And behold, what should my little eye spy? Worms. My worms. Eisenia fetida. About two dozen. Must have been some egg cases in one of last year's worm poop garden feedings.

This is in a Detroit winter, folks. Today's high is fixing to be, oh, about 27 F. That's some powerful worms. I am mightily impressed. I'll go out again later, on another worm recon mission.

The little buggers were ice cold, but started immediately wriggling from the heat coming off my hand. I brought them indoors, and tucked them safely in the indoor bin. My palm still remembers the cold of them.

Worms and You! Worm Food

(still life with worms and junkmail)

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What do worms in a bin eat? When thinking of what to feed worms, it's easier to think about what not to feed worms.

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Don't Feed:

Greasy foods
Salty foods
Alcoholic food or beverages
Vinegary foods
Animal products (meat, cheese, eggs, and any meat eaters' feces)

Eisenia fetida are manure worms. Their very favorite food is poop from other animals, But in a bin, manure does two things- 1) it can really stink, and 2) it can heat up and kill the worms, or at least make them very miserable. A stinky bin will just make you and your family very miserable (though the worms don't care).

I feed my worms a combination of poop from the house rabbits and kitchen scraps- finely chopped vegetable trimmings, cooked grains, stale bread. There's a food chain regarding who gets fed what and when in the house; saint-husband and I get first dibs. Bunnies get second dibs (vegetables only). Worms get whatever is left over. If I had chickens (*sigh*), they would be fed between the buns and the worms. I'd feed chicken poop to the worms, too, but only after it was pre-composted. Chicken poop is very high in ammonia and in concentrated amounts is dangerous in a bin. It stinks to high heaven, too.

When it comes to feeding the bunny poop, I have found that if I feed in very fine layers- say, a little every day and only on the surface- it neither stinks nor heats up. I feed whatever is in my buns' litter boxes every day, and it's gone in 24 hours. The bunny poop will make absolutely outstanding castings.

NEVER feed bin worms human, cat, or dog poop. It is full of pathogens and can make potentially dangerous castings. Worms in the wild will obviously eat any kind of poop that happens to be on the ground, but they have helpers in the weather, microscopic soil critters, UV, and other animals. In nature there is no waste. In human-controlled environments that's another matter entirely.

My worms also get fed nearly all our household junk mail (except for glossy paper- worms can't process it well and the inks can be poisonous). I use it as bedding in combination with my neighbors' newspapers.

So, what's the difference between bedding and food? Not much to the worms. In a bin, damp, fluffy, pre-soaked bedding is kept on top of the food and worms. It helps draw the worms to the surface since they are moisture-loving creatures. It helps keep the bin cool and aerated. It also controls odors if a new worm farmer overfeeds the bin. And ALL new worm farmers overfeed their bins, despite many well-published warnings not to do so. I was certainly guilty of it.

Eventually, the damp bedding gets eaten, too. My worm's castings are fairly light in color because of the paper. The nutrient balance in the finished castings is likely still good, though, because of the vegetable trimmings and, most of all, the fabulous bunny poop.

Come May or so, I'll be sending my first castings off to a lab for testing. It's required for resale of "soil amendments". Perhaps by June, I'll be selling my first castings at our local farmer's market.

Worms and You! The Worms...

The most common worms for composting (in North America) are Eisenia fetida, otherwise known as red wigglers.

It is extremely important that you use only surface worms, or epigeic worms (also called manure worms) for composting. The common earthworm, Lumbricus terrestris, is not a surface worm; it is a deep burrower, an anecic worm. Anecic worms build permanant borrows. Not only will they not do the job, they are likely to die in a bin.

True fact! Earthworms such as Lumbricus terrestris and Eisenia fetida are not native to North America, and are considered an invasive species. They are currently and actively decimating many US northern and Midwestern forests, because well-meaning fishermen "return" unused worms to the wild (they "dump out the can" after a day's fishing).

Adding to the problem, a lot companies now sell worms to gardeners. Not only are the worms likely to just crawl off if the environment isn't to their liking (a likely scenario if a gardener purchased worms to try and improve the soil in the first place), they reproduce like crazy.

Even so, Eisensia fetida and Lumbricus terrestris are both long and well-established species on the North American continent. They established a foothold (so to speak) in North America almost as soon as Europeans began settling here. They were introduced accidently, via ship ballast and tangled up in the roots of plants.

So, what's a conscientious worm farmer to do? Never release your worms into the "wild". Even if your environment is urban, don't release your worms. In the ground, worms are the megafauna- the "whales" in their ocean of soil. They are far larger than almost any creature under there; fungi, springtails, bacteria, nematodes, arthropods. They quickly overtake a biosphere and can radically change it. If you have to get rid of your worms, donate them to a school or give them to a community garden, where they will be welcomed.

How are the worms?

(Wow. Just, wow.)

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The worms are doing great. Once the temperature in the Big Honking Bin dropped below 80F, I dragged myself to my feet for mere minutes at a time, deep within my flu-haze, and started feeding them. Their first meal was crumbled-up stale bread and bunny poop.

Dee- licious!

Well, I must say the worms certainly thought so. I followed the enclosed directions (this portion of the directions was apparently correct, because it worked extraordinarily well). It says- apply a thin layer of food, half inch or less, followed by a thin layer of top bedding, followed by a light soaking of water.

People, the food was gone in two days. The bedding, in three.

So, I fed again. All bunny poop this time. Gone in a mere day. I cheated, and didn't add additional bedding. I might cheat somewhat more often, if I'm feeding exclusively bunny poop.

Again I fed, with rice that tragically fell on the kitchen floor. Gone in two days.

I've just fed again tonight- all bunny poop. I have no reason to think this time will be any different.

The bin has not once heated up. All the heating was mainly interior, from the dreaded undigested matter. The temperature has stabilized to 78F, and I suspect it will drop further still as the last undigested matter is, well, digested.

I'm no longer afraid to feed fresh bunny poop to the bin, as long as it's in small, small amounts. It does not heat up the bin.

How the food gets eaten is really interesting. The first creatures on the food are earthworm mites. They nibble away for a day or two and break it down, and then the worms tuck in.

A totally biased aside- earthworm mites are incredibly beautiful. They look like tiny, coppery pinheads, and in a healthy bin, they are found by the thousands upon thousands. You can actually hear them crawling and eating if you bend your ear towards the bin- a low din of crunching and munching. I still have no actual idea how they got in there- probably from some garden waste I added to the bin long ago. Though the science-romantic in me would love to think it's spontaneous generation.

I'm sure there are springtails in there, too, but they are really hard to see. The small bin was full of springtails- I could always find them jumping all over the place when I harvested castings.

So, what's that square thing with the orange elements on it? That's a heater board. I will never need to actually plug it in, since my bin is indoors. Plugged in, it's for outdoor/ coldweather bin-keeping. The orange wires are actually heating element stapled to the board. Even un-plugged-in, the board needs to sit on top of the bin contents. Ever look under a piece of wood or a stone outside, and find it's swarming with critters? Same idea. I'm not sure why the worms like it so much, but they do. They flock to it. Sometimes there are hundreds of worms under it, squirming above the bedding. It draws mainly young and adolescent worms, like some kind of wormy pre-teen dance club. And today, I took a look just under all the new castings and new food- HUNDREDS of new egg cases.

I must be doing something right. Gosh, finally!

The small bin is going extremely well, too, though I don't think I'll need it for pre-digesting the bunny poop. I've fed it nothing BUT bunny poop, and the pinkkids devour it. I suspect that these worms were raised on a diet of manure, because they've shown no signs of new bin shock and are eating new food very quickly.

Bin-shock is typically characterized by a "worm run", where worms crawl all over their tiny creation to get away from their new, though undetectably awful, environment. Leaving the lid off overnight can result in wormy disaster- hundreds of worms, crawling out of the bin and dying all over your walls and floor. Bin-shock is probably caused by a drastically different environment. I'd agree. I know from experience that it's also caused by making an indoor, enclosed hot compost pile...

Pre-Teen Worm Love

(Ok, hold still for the photo, kids!)

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I ordered two more pounds of worms on Monday and they arrived today. One teensy bone to pick- they are all pre-adolescent worms. In human years, they are all about nine years old. Not a clitellum to be found on any of the pinkkids.

How's that for arcane? I got your arcane right here, folks!

What's a clitellum, you ask? It's the extra-wide ring around the upper-third section of an earthworm. It's where reproduction takes place. It's only found on adult, sexually mature worms. When worms are in love, they grab onto each other's clitella with the help of setae (basically little hairs) and get to business. The clitellum is also where the egg case is formed. Soon after forming, the egg case is shed from the body. It looks like a tiny translucent lemon- it's even pale yellow at first. Right before hatching, it turns brown. It can hold up to about eight worms, but one to three is more usual.

I've seen worms pregnant with egg cases, and it's exceptionally cool. Worms having sex... well, it just looks sort of pink and gooey. They do it head-to-tail, though, if you must know.

True fact! Worms are hermaphroditic, but still need another worm to reproduce. Another true fact! If you ever see a company claiming they have "hybrid" worms, they are selling you snake oil, not worms. Worms can't be crossbred. That was a big scam on the internets a few years ago. I don't see it so much anymore, though.

But getting back to my child-worms-- eh, maybe it's ok. But I will say, I've done business with 4 different worm companies in 3 years, and this is the first time I didn't receive sexually mature worms.

Now, I'm no oligochaetologist, -gosh, I wish!- (please don't ask me to pronounce it- I'm still not sure I say "Eisenia fetida" correctly), but in the big worm shipment, nearly every worm was already a grown-up. And just two weeks later in the big honkin' Worm Wigwam, I have more egg cases than I've ever seen. And that bin has been a heap of trouble from the get-go.

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I'm just worried that, in the case of the small bin with its population of pre-adolescents, it will take longer to form a strong biosphere in the small bin. It's a wormy "Lord of the Flies", if you will.

Sure wish I knew an oligochaetologist to ask personally. Worm scientists are rare as hen's teeth, though.

Which leads to- why on earth am I starting another bin?

Simple. The big bin is too big to directly feed it bunny poop- bun poop is too "hot" for direct feeding to such a large bin. The small bin that hummed along so nicely for several years isn't really big enough to heat up, and bun poop got positively devoured in it. So I'm restarting it as a pre-digester for the big bin.

And, I just love worms. Really, I do.

One problem. I made a big mistake combining my small bin with the large bin. I did it for one reason: to innoculate the big bin with beneficials. But the small bin was a very strong biosphere on its own. It could handle almost anything and thrive. So now I'm starting over with the small bin and it will probably take a minimum of 6 months to get it up and humming again.

The best I can do is innoculate the small bin with a handful or two of bedding/castings from the big bin and hope for the best. And as soon as the snow melts, grab as much leaf mould as the bin will hold, for all the good critters therein.