Archive for July, 2010
I have been on the hunt for alternative sources of bedding. I usually just use leaves, but last fall I didn’t pick up enough leaves to handle the three worm bins I have a hand in. So, given that I now have a lawn, I thought I’d try grass clippings.
First, off, I knew that fresh grass clippings are not a significant source of carbon–they have a C:N ratio of 20:1. But I figured I could dry them out and have a ready source of bedding for my worms.
I looked around the internet. The folks over at Redworm Composting say “yes but”. These posts on GardenWeb states that grass clippings never lose their low c:n ratio. However, this book on composting has dried grass clippings in the “brown” category, as does this article.
What to do? I decided to ask an extension agent: “How long do grass clippings need to dry before they are considered a ‘brown’ in terms of composting?” And the answer came back:
It usually won’t take longer that a week, depending on the environment. Getting them off the lawn, especially if it is irrigated, into a “holding area” would hasten the process.
Excellent. Now that I knew the grass clippings were really a “brown”, I needed to dry some out and try to use them as bedding.
I did this by laying some grass clippings out on a tarp (you can see some sticks that got caught up in the clipping gathering process).
Grass clippings on tarp
This location probably gets about 6 hours of direct sun a day, and by the end of 10 days, the grass clippings were pretty dry. I did end up turning the clippings every 3-4 days, and was surprised by how green the grass was under the top layer.
Then I added the grass clippings to a worm bin I had.
Grass clippings in worm bin
Thus far, I think that grass clippings are a substandard bedding. They take some time to prepare, and they definitely tend to clump in the worm bin. In addition, they don’t seem to hold water very well. The grass clippings dry out and get all white, as you can see below.
Grass clippings going white
So, the lesson to me is that I need to do a better job of picking up neighborhood leaves this fall!
July 30th, 2010
One of the things I didn’t think of when brainstorming what to do with redworms was to use it as a supplemental source of feed for chickens. Luckily, some other folks have thought about it. Here’s a good page with some suggestions. If you are at all familiar with worms, you can skip the first 2/3rds of the page–it’s only the last section where the author discusses how to use worms to feed chickens. He has 4 suggested ways to integrate worms into a chicken system, including building a wormery with various sections that would allow the chickens to eat some worms and not others, and drying the worms using them as a protein additive.
I was talking to someone a few weeks ago who said that worms contained a fair amount of zinc, and that zinc is helpful for egg production. I wasn’t able to substantiate the first statement (though it looks like too much zinc is toxic to E. Foetida). As for the second, I found this reference stating that “normally, 15 to 30 grams of zinc are added to 1 ton of feed”.
It looks like some backyard chicken keepers have investigated redworms as a supplemental protein source. At the bottom of the post, AK-Bird-Brain runs the numbers, and concludes that, given the amount of food scraps (20-25 lbs) one would have to feed worms to get 1 lb of extra worms a day, one would be better off just feeding the scraps directly to the chickens. This makes sense the me–the only situation where I can see coming to a different conclusion would be if:
- you wanted the castings for your garden or to sell and
- you had access to a large amount of feedstock that chickens might not eat (chicken manure [here's a post describing such a system], other manure, hair, etc)
I also found this table of chicken parasites that can be transmitted via worms (though it says earthworms, so I’m not sure it applies to redworms). Some other posts in the backyardchickens site also implied that chickens don’t like the taste of redworms, either.
What do you think? Do any of you have experience using redworms for supplemental nutrition for chickens?
July 20th, 2010
A few months ago, I moved. Rather than try to move my previous worm bin, I decided to try a different type of worm container–a 55 gallon drum. A quick google search found someone who sold 55 gallon drums, and I bought a couple. I wanted plastic, but he didn’t have any, so I bought 2 steel 55 gallon drums previously used for holding orange juice. (It’s amazing what you can fit into a tiny sedan.)
Basic setup: I filled the bin with a couple of bags of leaves I had retrieved from curbside last fall. I put in some water. I also drilled five drainage holes in the bottom of the barrel. The barrel came with a steel top–I put that on top to protect the worms and retain moisture, but I leave a crack so that some air can get in and out. And then I put in about 10 gallons of worms and vermicompost. You can see the lid on the lower right–I put a rock on it to deter critters.
Barrel o worms
While it was chilly but not freezing this spring, the barrel seemed to work fine, as you can see from this photo:
Worms in a barrel
However, as we head toward summer, I’m a bit worried. The drum is black, so any sun really heats it up. And the worms can’t easily retreat into the earth, as they could with my previous worm bin. I recently moved it to a shadier area–I hope that helps the worms a bit.
Last I checked, the worms were doing alright, and I even found a cocoon:
worm cocoon
The reason I wanted to try this is that 55 gallon drums are pretty cheap ($20 each, I think) and readily available, and I thought these would be a fun container to use when vermicomposting large amounts of atypical feedstock. That is, things like dog and cat poop, or human hair. I want to play around with them, and yet be able to use some of my worm castings on food plants. These containers seemed like a great way to segregate such feedstocks. I still think there is promise in these, but do want to see how the worms survive the winter months.
However, the downsides of the 55 gallon drums are many:
- Unless I cut a hole in the bottom, I will have a hard time incrementally removing worm castings.
- They are hard to move around–even 30 gallons of worms and vermicompost weigh a lot
- They don’t drain well–although I could have helped this by drilling more holes
- Worms can’t retreat out of them–again, more holes and placement on dirt would help.
- As mentioned above, they heat up.
After a few months of worm keeping in a 55 gallon drum, I noticed the local recycling center was selling soil savers for half price, so I bought two. More on that later.
July 10th, 2010
