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Composting used Aspen bedding.....

J

jbkd

Crazy Dreamer.......
OK, I know I am bringing in gardening on a snake site.... :shrugs:

After reading the long post about aspen bedding in one of the other forums here, I got to thinking about all the aspen folks are sending ot the landfill and wondered if anybody has been composting their used bedding?

Way back when, we use to compost the bedding from our rabbits and it made a great compost/fert for the garden. So why not compost the bedding from your rodents and snakes, if you are a gardener also? I know they say no meat in the compost, but I am sure the very small amount you would be putting in would not make a difference.

Any thoughts..... :cheers:
 
When I am spot cleaning, I just toss the little bit of old bedding into the nearest trash. However, when I do a complete bedding change, I use the old bedding as compost or mulch around my outdoor plants. I've done this ever since I got my snakes, so not all of us are just sending it to the landfills.
 
I regularly dump the aspen into my compost bin. I have a small landscape co, I compost as much debris as I can - mainly to save on cost of running the biz. One of the rules of thumb to composting is to use equal amounts of 'green stuff' (grass clippings and fresh leaves) and 'brown stuff' (dried leaves and pine needles, and in my case snake shavings) Seems to be working so far, I also tried using it to mulch around bedding plants but I don't really like the color it gets as it ages, kind of grey.
 
All of my 'biodegradable' stuff goes to the compost.

I have two compost pails under the kitchen sink for vegetable and fruit trimmings, tea leaves and coffee grounds.

I also have a huge Rubbermaid Roughneck trash can that gets filled up with used mouse, rat, ferret, bird, and snake bedding and taken out. I'm pretty pleased with the aspen so far, its soft enough it doesn't take long to break down.

I throw in a few shovel fulls of chicken manure once in a while too. So far while the top grows the most lovely form of toadstools, the inside is nice 'n hot and of the 'chocolate cake' variety of compost. I can't wait to use it on my garden next year!

We just bought the house in mid-04, and had to start up a pile from scratch. With all of our leaves from our trees in the yard (we live in a forest), our garden prunings, kitchen scraps, and dirty animal bedding the pile is doing pretty good so far. I don't bag grass clippings, so don't have any of that for 'green' material.
 
We have been dumping the dirty "mouse mulch" and "snake mulch" at the base of our trees since 1990. Our sandy Florida soil around the trees actually looks different now than it used to after all of our years of additions. Works great, and cheap, too! (Be careful with mouse shavings - they tend to be dirtier than snake shavings and could burn sensitive plants. We spread them thinly, away from the trunk, and have never had a problem).
 
In 2004, my Wife's garden got ravaged by the growing local rabbit population. I made a joke about putting some of the soiled aspen I pull out of the adults snake containers in the garden. I told her, maybe the scent would freak the rabbits out....

Well, this past year her garden thrived and nary a rabbit was seen in the garden. Sure, there could be other reasons for it...but I'm fairly sure that soiled aspen I put around the plants once a week helped !

I quit doing it later in August, and sure enough, a lot of the leftover tomato plants got pillaged !
 
I wish that worked for deer - the product 'deer-away' is supposed to smell like lion urine so I think the rabbit theory is a good one.
 
I have read that an old deer repellant remedy is to urinate around the perimeter of the garden. Human (and probably any predator) urine is supposed to keep them away. (I think it would be easier for guys to use this one, lol!) Maybe cat box droppings would help, if they smell like cougars or bobcats to the deer.
 
:grin01: Its funny to imagine a deer being afraid of my 12 pound cat. But if it works, that's all that matters...
 
Kathy...

Ok time to embarrass myself...

In 2004, my Wife read something to that effect...and I had to pee into a plastic gallon milk jug a couple times for her to use around the flowers...

Now you see why I came up with the snake poop formula !! ;)
 
LOL! And here my husband thought I was nuts when I asked him to pee on my baby mimosa trees the deer kept nibbling to nubs.

Another thing that works for deer, is to place hair from your hairbrush or collected from a barber shop around the perimeter of the garden and if its long enough, tying it onto the fence. This one worked pretty good for my mom for a few years. Although through some experimentation, women's hair had a better deterrent effect. I'm guessing because our shampoo tends to be smellier and the products we use on our hair.

The garden at our new house we were more cautious after mom's disastrous garden the year before. I have a 7ft tall fence, and a 2ft wide section is buried under the ground to deter rabbits. So far the only pest has been a mole aerating the soil for me.

We've never had deer actually eat tomato plants in all of the years my mom has had a garden, until last year. They ate everything down to the ground. It got to the point that mom had to put wire cages around everything with a small enough gauge that the deer couldn't fit their noses through. So mom had to get rid of her garden. And no, my mom likes to do it the hard way and didn't want a tall fence around it that deer didn't want to jump over. ;)

We've also used a product called "Liquid Fence" before that works great, but doesn't last long after a rain. Its a mixture of garlic oil and rotten eggs, and yes, it stinks! But once it dries on the plants, you don't notice it, but the deer and my parent's dog sure did. Mom's begonias weren't nibbled, but instead smooshed and crushed as Paige rolled herself on the essence. :grin01:
 
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