For the new bed I will use the composting redworms. Here is where I run in to problems as I don't know what to use or what would be best. First the bed.....I can make a 30 foot long by 3 or 4 foot wide bed 18 inches high. Does it need a bottom other than our native sand? It would be outside but somewhat protected from rain by an overhang. It would have a mister system on it on a timer to maintain moisture. The sand here drains well. OR I have 10 half blue barrels that have drainage holes in them I could use as the bins, or both.

Materials......I have 11 chickens that are free range but do have the manure from the nights when they are locked up. I have 23 ducks and they are also free range but have the night time manure. I have extra rabbit manure as well. Have egg shells. I have newspaper from myself and a neighbor. Have an unlimited, truckload after truckload of electric company trims from around the utility lines and that is mostly the small limbs and leaves and they have been run through their chipper of course. Also have a neighbor with horses. The horses are outside and graze days but at night are locked up so have the nightime manure and she feeds pure alfalfa hay so there is quite a bit of that in the mix but it is mostly urine soaked pine shavings. Far as the amount I would say I get about a shortbed pickup load a week.

Any ideas?

Welcome to the forum. What you describe, sounds like what most folks here would like to find under the tree come Christmas morning..25 foot worm bed, rabbit manure, horse manure, poultry manure (for composting only), loads of free mulch, etc.
But pictures, pictures, Please.. of your worm run with the cages above it, the barrels you're thinking to use, the outside place you're considering using and especially the worms you already have. These will help us to (possibly) identify the worms, as well as advise you on the best course of action. I am sure you'll have a slew of responses on this within a day or two.

Shaul

So I am confused. With what you are already doing you probably have worms everywhere. Maybe you are already doing the vermicomposting thing just with out the cute little plastic $$$Container.

The wood chips would be good for a Back to Eden garden.

If your chickens or rabbits are not already using the newspaper or egg shell I can not see a need to do anything other than toss it onto the rabbit manure bin or under the chickens. Any old pine trees chop up and put under the night time chickens.

I will get you pictures today:) When I posted it was night here or would have had them already. I forgot goat manure mixed with hay but that is maybe a half truckload 4 times a year.

Equinox,

The kitchen scraps go to the poultry.

I am use to redworms from fishing and I am use to what we would call manure worms but these worms we have here are different. The body of the worm is very firm to the touch and when touched they whip their bodies back and forth in an S shape and I am not kidding actually bounce off the ground they whip so violently. I will post a picture of them.

I will look up back to Eden garden. The chips are free and delivered to the house and due to our sand I go through maybe 15 truckloads a year. I have a tractor with a front end loader so it makes it easy. I grow many 100's of fruiting plants trust me you don't want to see that list lol. I use a lot of the chips on those plants as well as on the veggie garden.

I guess what I am asking guidance on is a mix to use, I hope that uses the tree service chips. Like a 1 part wood chips to 2 parts blah...that sort of thing? The reason I am getting the redworms is I think they will offer more production. I will buy them but they are cheap as I know a person here in town that raises them under his rabbits just in the manure. I don't have enough rabbit manure though to do that with two full bins. He has 200 rabbits and I only have 6 plus their off spring. The reason I want the worms is the castings for my plants and to feed the worms back to the poultry.

I really appreciate the responses and questions as this is new to me and trying to learn. Pictures will be taken and posted this morning.

First here are the native spastic worms.

This is the spot where the new worm bed will be located. The bed will be along the white wall and buried with just a few inches above ground level. It is in a fenced off area so the ducks and chickens will not have access. This area is actually a pretty big mist bed where plants go that have just been replanted. It is pretty much pure shade and has over head misters. The black pipe you see are what the misters are connected too. The pipe coming down the wall will be over the worm bed and will mist the bed several times a day. I can change the misters to keep the bed more or less wet.

The mulch.

The chicken coop. It is elevated as you can see and probably odd to those in colder regions but here it is only needed to keep the birds cool. The ducks have their own 20x10 house.

The blue barrels. They are just 55 gallon barrels cut in half. They were under the rabbit pen to catch the manure before the worm bed was placed there.

The current worm bed under the rabbit cages.

What you are doing is pretty large scale compared to what most of us here do. It really isn't a place to start. It is a place for a well established wormer to grow into.

The sand surrounding your bins may be OK. The worms will prefer the food-rich environment inside the bin and will stay put.

In Florida, the manure worms (I am assuming PEs) may do as well or better than EFs. They are prolific breeders, and they tolerate heat better than EFs.

You have a LOT of nitrogen available to you, and very little carbon, except in forms that do not break down readily. This could be a problem. I would check on C:N ratios of the various manures that you have available to you and see if you need to find another source of carbon. Horse manure is fine by itself, and I have heard of people VCing rabbit manure with no additional carbon. Chicken and duck may be another matter. Considering how these tend to heat up, you may want to pre-compost them, mixed with SOME sort of carbon source, before feeding them to the worms.

Trimmings from the electric company probably make better mulch than worm food. It takes too long for wood chips to break down in the worm bin.

If your native worms are doing the job, you are in good shape. If you need to buy worms, the rule of thumb is 1 lb for every 2 square feet of surface area. You may need to take out a second mortgage on your house to buy that many worms. If your friend can provide them, take what you can and let them grow into the space you have for them. This may take a couple of years, depending on how many worms you start with.

Once you get established, I think you will be in great shape. You are building a worm paradise.

What would you suggest as forms of carbon that break down more rapidly?

The wood chips here due to the heat, moisture and very long growing season seem to go fast. The mulch I put around my fruit trees each winter. In fact just did it yesterday and you can see it around the plum trees in the picture of the mulch pile. 10" of mulch is gone by late summer, well not gone but is soil. I don't know if you would consider that fast break down though.

My native worms are ok I guess but they seem to take a long time to reproduce or perhaps I am just being impatient since you said years. I started by electroshocking the worms up and adding them to the bins. but there was probably only 1000???? put in that long bin I showed.

The native worms are probably not the best suited for VC. They are probably soil dwelling worms, rather than surface/litter dwelling worms. Get what you can from your friend. The worms will expand. The only reason I am estimating a couple of years is the large amount of volume you want to fill with worms. They should grow pretty quickly in the conditions you are giving them. EFs and PEs both reproduce quickly. But the growth is logarithmic, which means that it will seem slow at first.

1000 worms will take a long time to fill a bin as large as the one under your rabbits. If you have soil dwelling worms, they may never fill it. I can't tell how wide the bin is, but I would guess that 1000 EFs would take almost 2 years to fill just that bin. Once you get to that point, you could take 1/4 of your worms out to start another bin, and in a couple of months you would be back to full capacity. A lot will depend on how many worms you are able to start with.

Thank you that helps a lot.

It is warm here and humid. The trees each have their own spray head so the chips never dry out though have never seen a worm in the chips not that I looked very hard.

The worms in the bins are defiantly soil dwelling. The sand under the manure bins is pretty wet and if you shock it dozens of worms come straight out of the sand. Even the worms in the bin if I pull the hay back and the manure there are no worms in it but are instead in the "soil" under the hay/manure. I will do as you advised and get the manure worms.

The bin in the picture is 3' wide or so.

The horses are bedded in pine shavings..I wish they were bedded in hay but no such luck.

I am an outdoor vermicomposter in zone 9Ca. You have the potential to create a lot of compost and castings.
What are your goals? ie: sell worms? create vermicompost for garden and orchard? sell compost? ect.. Hobby or profession?
How much vermicompost do you want to produce in a day/week/month/ or year?
Is that wormbed under the rabbit cages active? how long since it was used? What is it currently filled with?
Do you currently do traditional compost piles? If not spend some time on the soil/compost/mulch forum. You could/should compost those chips with manures, let it cool and feed it to worms. A tractor would save the back. Wood chips take a little longer to break down than most worm-farmers want to wait so many avoid them. But worms love them and they trap air in the bed. You could sift larger chucks out

I have poor vision and can not ID your worm. I have never ID'ed mine either. I believe most of my herd is native red "manure" worms. They breed and compost my horse and chiken manure quickly. I have about 250sq' of wormbed active. My worms are not as large as yours, but are hard and do a fine "breakdance" when exposed to light. LOL

If you find worms in the compost or manure piles, they are probably composting worms. Those shocked up from deep are likely burrowing worms, better served in the garden.

I have a few ideas for you depending on your goals and how hard you want to work.

Pete

Lets see.....Yes I have a tractor with a front end loader. Not sure how I could exist without it. I get maybe 15 truckloads of chips a year delivered but could get more if I wanted them.

My goals are castings for the many hundreds of fruiting plants I grow and compost to enrich the white sugar sand I live on. The chips help a ton but always looking for new ways to do things. The other purpose and the main purpose of the worms is chicken and duck feed. Have no plans to sell any worms or anything. Almost all of the produce I grow here aside from what the wife and I can eat and the well fed neighbors goes to local churches and food pantries.

I can't answer how much castings I want as I am unsure. Same goes with compost but I am sure I could use all I could produce.

The wormbed is active with the native worms but it sure is not full. If you take a pitchfork down in to the soil you will see maybe 25 worms per fork. It is filled with torn newspaper, cardboard and the top layer is hay and goat manure and of course the rabbits are constantly making their deposits. It has existed since midsummer I guess.

The horse manure is new...that one has me unsure as the pile is probably 90% urine soaked pine shavings and the remaining 10% is actual manure and alfalfa stems.

You could also turn those blue barrels into nice systems if you can keep in total shade. It takes very little sun to overheat plastic bins. The more worm systems you start the better. If one system goes bad you have backups. Start small, and learn while they grow. Patience is required!

I hope this ramble helps.

Good luck

I guess I am kind of putting the cart before the horse as I still have not figured out how to raise the worms yet:)

larry

To start a new thread click on the post a message button that the red arrow in the picture is pointing to. It is at the top of the page. Write the threads subject then ask your question and post..easy as can be.

I think you got it, thank you. I googled them and I would be willing to bet you nailed it. These things are so fast and jumpy they are kind of hard to catch as they whipsaw back and forth and literally bounce across the ground.

I will look up the African nightcrawlers. Heck maybe I will try a few different species each in their own barrel and see which do best.

You wrote: "I use very fresh pure (no bedding) horse manure in this bed and it turns black and unrecognizable in 10 days"
So how do you get around the problem of Worming medicine given to horses, which would kill off your worms. In just about every post I've ever seen on using horse manure (though a great feedstock for worms), they caution against using fresh horse manure, and recommend letting it stand in the open air for at least a month, to allow time for the medicine to dissipate, before using it as feed.

Shaul

Regarding high Carbon materials. Shredded Newspaper and shredded cardboard are good choices. You can goole composting C:N ratio materials (or something like that and get lots more info. Here's the data from one such site. (I have no idea how to format it, but I think you can follow.)

Sandy loam (fine)

7:1

Humus

10:1

Food scraps

15:1

Alfalfa hay

18:1

Grass clippings

19:1

Rotted manure

20:1

Sandy loam (coarse)

25:1

Vegetable trimmings

25:1

Oak leaves

26:1

Leaves, varies from

35:1 to 85:1

Peat moss

58:1

Corn stalks

60:1

Straw

80:1

Pine needles

60:1 to 110:1

Farm manure

90:1

Alder sawdust

134:1

Sawdust weathered 3 years

142:1

Newspaper

170:1

Douglas fir bark

491:1

Sawdust weathered 2 months

625:1

I really like the looks of your rabbit cage wormbed. I was thinking of building something similar. Maybe add some bedrun redworms to it also.

About horse manure. I use fresh and pure, picked up from our paddock and deposited in a wormbed daily. De-wormer is shortlived from what I have read. But if I give the horse deworming meds, I simply compost it's manure for a few days, and not feed it to my worms. Horse manure does not heat up here (mild cool summers) unless it is mixed with bedding, like the stuff you got from the stalls. Hot composting manure reduces pothogens and kills the hay seeds in horse manure, But once it dries out it is hard to rewet for the worms. I add no water, and putting in the bed daily greatly reduces odors and flies! I let the worms take care of the pathogens (some studies suggest this) and pull the few sprouts that show up.

Larry and Shaul, it is great to see you guys up on the board and posting! I have enjoyed reading your posts in the past and look forward to more.

I hope this is useful. Just a rainy day ramble from the northern California coast Good luck!

I just started the compost pile today....I layered horse manure and pine bedding with woodchips and poultry manure a few times and watered well. Will see if it heats up but I think it should ........but for now I have no aged compost or aged manure......I have a lot of fresh rabbit manure? I have newspaper? I have a shredder. I do have rich sandy soil. The bins will have mist heads on a timer so should stay damp. Can I use the ingredients above to get the worms started while I wait for the compost?

It is up to you, but I would wait for the compost before spending to much. Lots of ways to start, but worms don't like their environment and feedstock changing much.

Also, I do not live in a hot area, but I do not, or very rarely water my worms. Make sure you have LOTS of big drainage holes in the bottom of those barrels. And just to be clear, soil is not usually added to worm bins, just organic matter.

The pile is pushing 5 feet tall and probably 15 feet across, is that big enough?

On the rabbit manure...I thought people raised the worms directly under the rabbit pens?

So just dried leaves that have been shredded with like a lawn mower would work well?

The misters don't put out a lot of water just keep the humidity high and the surface damp. But I will be sure to take your advice and make sure I am not adding too much water.

Rabbit manure dropping into an established open bottom wormbed is quite different than starting a new closed-in system with no escape route, a bin with just paper and fresh manure for bedding. I am just trying to be safe with my advice.

I don't have many leaves to use, but they are said to be great high-carbon bedding. Dried and shredded sounds good. I would certainly use them. Also they are a great addition to the compost pile.

It might be wise to practice with some worms in a plastic bucket. Like your barrels only smaller.

I know this may be confusing at first. Outdoor open-bottom vermicomposting in zone 9 should be EZ! Once established, they are tough and forgiving.

I put my hand in the pile today and it is pretty hot. On the bedding I also have an almost full bucket of coffee grounds, can I use those?

You wrote: "Larry and Shaul, it is great to see you guys up on the board and posting! I have enjoyed reading your posts in the past and look forward to more".
Thanks for your words of encouragement. This thread has been a great learning experience and I for one, have benefited by it.
Now, whenever I hear someone talking about moisture levels in a bin, and saying that 'it should be no wetter than a wrung-out sponge' or that 'you should only be able to squeeze 2 or 3 drops from it'; well naturally, it can only be about a closed system with no drainage (like what I myself have), because in an open system or in a bin with holes in the bottom, the moisture levels would self-regulate as the excess liquid drained away. Now when I make my oft-heard statement that 'EF's can live in up to 90% moisture' here's where I get my sources:
This is a link to the website of Jorge Dominguez, a research scientist in the field of Earthworm Biology.
http://webs.uvigo.es/jdguez/en/
At the site, under the heading 'Publications', can be found articles (many of them viewable), dating back to 1995.
In the Journal: Soil Zoology for Sustainable Development in the 21st Century S.H. Shakir Hanna and W.Z.A. Mikhail, eds, Cairo 2004... he published an article entitled 'Vermicomposting Organic Wastes - a Review'.
Here is the Title page:

17. Vermicomposting Organic Wastes: A Review
Jorge Dominguez1 and Clive A. Edwards2
'Departamento de Ecoloxia e Bioloxia Animal, Universidade de Vigo, E-36200 Spain 2Soil Ecology Laboratory, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210 USA
SUMMARY
The importance of biological processes in the management of organic wastes has been widely recognized and this Chapter deals with one of the most efficient methods for converting solid organic materials into environmentally-friendly useful and valuable products. Vermicomposting is an accelerated process of bio-oxidation and stabilization of organic wastes involving interactions between earthworms and microorganisms. Earthworms, the main characters of this process, are described briefly, showing how these animals can be important organic waste decomposers and converters. The different earthworm species that are suitable for vermicomposting have quite different requirements for their optimal development, growth and productivity in organic wastes and we review the life cycles of these species and the general requirements of ideal vermicomposting earthworm species. Vermicomposting is a complex biological and ecological process and to illustrate some of the important physical, chemical and biological transformations occurring during it, we present a case study. Although earthworms are critical for the process, in vermicomposting, complex interactions between the organic matter, microorganisms, earthworms and other soil invertebrates result in the fragmentation, bio-oxidation and stabilization of organic matter. The vermicomposting system sustains complex food webs, and at the same time, modifies different chemical forms of several nutrient elements into inorganic compounds readily available to plants, which are important for nutrient dynamics.

On pg. 11 of the article (pg. 379 of the Journal), under the heading 'Moisture' it reads:
Moisture Content
There is a relationship between the moisture content in organic wastes and the growth rate of earthworms. In vermicomposting systems, the optimum range of moisture contents has been reported to be between 50 to 90 %.
E. fetida can survive in moisture ranges between 50 and 90 % (Edwards 1988, and Sims and Gerard 1985), but grows more rapidly between 80 and 90 % in animal wastes (Edwards 1988). Reinecke and Venter(1985) reported that the optimum moisture content for E. fetida was above 70 % in cow manure, but E. andrei cultured in pig manure grew and matured best between 65 and 90% moisture content, with 85 % being the optimum (Figure 4) (Dominguez and Edwards1997). According to Reinecke and Venter (1985), it seems likely that a lowering of the growth rate due to low moisture conditions can also retard sexual development so that earthworms of the same age could develop clitella at different times under different moisture conditions.

I would suggest reading the entire article, it is quite enlightening.

Shaul

As for coffee grounds, I get big bags from a local coffee house, filters and all. I use in my compost, my garden beds in the winter or feed worms with it. I treat it more as a food I topfeed with rather than bedding. It will heat up some. Until you get your bed established, you should precompost most everything. Starting a new system is hard and where most mistakes are made. You will have LOTS of bedding when your compost is done.

Remember, patience is key! Good luck.

I will keep making the piles, had two more truckloads of woodchips delivered yesterday. I will make them in layers as I get the horse manure.

I love my new compost thermometer. When your pile starts to cool you should mix it up again and add water if needed. This gets the stuff around the edges mixed in and cooking too. After that when it cools it is worm food! Look under your pile when you are done for native volunteers.

Will look for a compost thermometer.....must be pretty darn long if it reaches the center of the pile.

Will pick up another truck load of horse bedding/manure tomorrow. I assume I don't add it to this pile but instead start a new pile with it.

What is the temperature of that?

What is confusing? I will measure it but would imagine it is just ground temp as there are not many worms in it. They are just the native worms which I guess are Alabama jumpers.

The wormbed temp is 65.4