Living at a farm: Rabbitry thorough cleaning and taking by-products to the chickens and garden

So today I'm doing a thorough cleaning at the rabbitry. I have to sweep the room where I raise the rabbits. I have nearly 40 rabbits and 4 of them are pregnant. The fifth one gave birth to 9 babies some 2 weeks ago.

I'm going to remove all the rabbit droppings, some of which now have maggots and I will feed the maggots to the chickens. I will also fertilize my garden with rabbit droppings that I'm going to remove from the rabbitry today. I planted a great number of butternut squash plants as well as cucumbers and they are now at flowering stage. They will surely love the rabbit droppings.

I'm also going to collect the rabbit urine then spray my tomatoes as liquid fertilizer. Rabbit urine is reach in nitrogen and calcium. Tomatoes desperately require a fertilizer called calcium nitrate, so that they don't suffer from blossom end rot, which is a calcium deficiency condition. By spraying the tomatoes with rabbit urine once every week, I am certain that my tomatoes will not get affected by blossom end rot.

I will also clean the drinking bowls and the dishes that harvest rabbit urine and rabbit droppings for the rabbits that live on the lower hutches. These dishes make my life easier especially when it comes to cleaning.

When I'm done with cleaning, I will spray part of the walls and floors with some insecticide so as to reduce the number of house flies in the rabbit house.

The last thing is to feed the rabbits, give them fresh water and pellets. For the past 4 months I have been feeding my rabbits pellets only. Although it's strongly recommended to give rabbits unlimited supply of hay and also 60 to 150g or pellets daily, depending with the rabbits' age, I personally don't give them hay anymore, because we're in hot summer here, it's not yet raining daily so there is a serious shortage of free hay in the bush and so I have made my rabbits adapt to surviving on pellets only. You just have to do it gradually, maybe over a period of 2 to 3 weeks because the digestive system of the rabbits is very sensitive, if you suddenly change their diet, they will die.

This is a lesson for another day, but for now let me say rabbits that feed on pellets only actually taste nicer and are more healthier than those that eat greens only, because with pellets, rabbits get a balanced diet. Also, it is the greens that are likely to upset the digestive system of a rabbit as compared to pellets. We will talk about that in detail some other day.

I gotta go and get busy, this is going to take the greater part of my day.