compost went cold

[Chic Rustler]

So I always keep a cold pile for kitchen scraps and what not. I actually have 2 now. Anyway I decided a while back to heat it up. I shoveled a wheel barrow of rabbit manure and layered it in the pile while watering. A couple days later it got pretty hot. Then the cold came. It got down to the 30s and it had been a week so I turned it. Then it got colder for a few days. Now it's back up to the 50s in the day and my pile is still cold.

Did all the microbes freeze? What's the deal? It's doesn't seem very dry. But it's cold as a cucumber. Before I turned it there was steam coming from it.


I'm gonna see how much manure is under the rabbits and try to turn it and layer that stuff in again with water but I don't y5hink the manure is gone already


What do you guys think?

 

[YoteMeadows]

I'm following this, because I can never get our piles right.

 

[Mini Horses]

Hmmm....I don't compost with any real consideration. Can't help you. But I would THINK the temps went the wrong way and killed it. Will it recover? Probably -- if Mother Nature wants it to.

I used to stall several horses and as I cleaned out, while they were In pasture, I had the usual "pile". It was on it's own. But did fine. Guess enough manure, shavings, rain & sun worked because I had a lovely pile of great soil in the end. I never turned it, just added to it.

I DL my chickens & use that, again, they do the work. I started a pile in my little garden area this past summer, dutifully piling up cut grass & weeds. The chickens found it once it had wilted well, been rained on and was rotting. It has been spread by them now & you can't even tell it was "a pile". Guess they found bugs!

Surely -- someone will be a DIY with compost & reply.

 

[Chic Rustler]

I was digging some out yesterday for the raised beds. It's was 60°f and the stuff was still frozen. I think I figured it out.

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

If you can find anything that is still green.....it will heat it up.

 

[Chic Rustler]

If you can find anything that is still green.....it will heat it up.

When the ice thaws I'm gonna mix in more rabbit poo. That's all I got

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

I just use the deep litter from the chicken coop. Not much going into the compost this year, as all leaves and cut grass(bagged) goes into the run for the chickens. But the past 6 years, we have had some fantastic compost. I put everything in the pile but the tomato vines. They get burned. But kitchen waste the chickens don't eat-coffee grounds, tea bags, onion skins, potato skins, other plants that I pull from the gardens, some cut grass. It just depends on how things are growing that season. Chicken feathers when we were processing chickens. The chicken blood went to the rose bushes.

 

[Chic Rustler]

I have some serious deep litter going on in the coop. But it's not ready yet. I'm gonna let it go til summer

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

I usually only pull out the DL if it gets wet. And sometimes, it rains enough here to flood into the coop.
Or, if I start smelling ammonia.

 

[Chic Rustler]

the deep litter in my chick grow out pen gets rained on all the time. I just kept adding more. The past two days I have been shovelling out 4 inches of rich black compost from the pen for my raised beds. Great stuff!