Commercial meat rabbit farming operations have become popular over the years and the manure is often sold as a sideline income source.

Where to find a supplier of rabbit manure:

You may find a rabbit breeder or farmer in your area that supplies rabbit manure or local nurseries or garden centres may stock the manure.

Farmers Markets may also be a good place to find the manure.

Keeping rabbits yourself may be an option to maintain a sufficient supply of manure for your vegetable garden. Cages should be designed so they are raised off the ground with wire floors to allow the manure to fall through for easy collection.

Rabbits can also be placed on the ground on top of your finished veggie beds. If their feed is supplemented with commercial pellets or food scraps they can remain in one spot for a week or more until they have eaten a section of ground bare. It is important to keep regular water and feed up to them.

5 ways to use rabbit poo around your home garden

• Rabbit poo is excellent dug directly into a garden prior to planting. Pre-dig your veggie patches or use a tiller or rotary hoe. Cast rabbit manure over the garden bed. 2 – 4 inches (50 – 100cm) is an ideal depth. Use a fork to roughly dig the manure into the soil.
• The manure can be added directly at the base of individual plants and watered in. This allows nutrients to slowly leach around the root ball of plants.
• Mixing a third of a bucket of rabbit manure with two thirds of a bucket of water can make a liquid fertilizer. Allow soaking overnight. Strain the liquid off into another bucket. Add 2or 3 cups of this concentrated liquid to a 10 litre watering can and water plants liberally. The solid matter left after collecting the liquid can be added to a compost heap or around trees or shrubs.
• Rabbit manure makes an ideal bedding material for worm farms. It is also an ideal supplemental feed or bulk feed if you will not be looking after them for some time.
• The manure can be added to traditional compost heaps. It is especially ideal where materials such as seaweed, that leach nitrogen from the heap are included.

If you have backyard chooks or rabbits you can build a fence around your vegie patch and let the chooks or rabbits roam freely. They will keep the garden weed free and leave a good source of fertilizer for the spring season.

You could also add old hay, kitchen scraps, seaweed etc if you have chickens or just hay if you have rabbits. This will be consumed and/or scratched into the soil improving soil structure.

Approximately 4 weeks before spring planting stop adding any additions to allow weed seeds from hay or unwanted seeds from vegetable scraps (like tomato seeds) from remaining in the soil and sprouting in an unwanted area.