Can you make used pet bedding into compost?

[FlightAttendant]

Hello,

I'd really appreciate some advice as I'm going to try and start a compost heap/bin/whatever it's called!

We regularly have loads of old hay and shavings which the rabbits have used, and it's filling up the green bin, and I'm not even sure they will collect it! So I wondered whether this would be suitable for composting.

I don't really know where to start...we have a spare area of paving we could site it on, but is this suitable or does it need to be on earth? I'm sure we could find a place if so.

I don't really know what kind of bin to go for either...we don't have much money, I've seen plastic bins for about £15 I think but could we potentially just make one ourselves?

I'd really be glad of some pointers before we get it all totally wrong

Thankyou

Bump.

Yes, definitely, it will be fine to compost. Bin would be better on earth, tho paving is ok if you really have to. I would layer your rabbit hay/shavings in with your softer stuff. Basically you want a mix of high nitrogen stuff (soft green waste, kitchen trimmings etc) and high carbon stuff (hay, though nitrogen content will be increased by the rabbit pee & poo, also woody garden waste, torn up newspaper etc.)

There's lots of info here on the Garden Organic site. The only thing I would add to their guides is that I personally would NOT add either cardboard other than that which has contained food directly (widely recommended for composting, but issues with persistent fungicides sprayed on many cardboard boxes), or wood ash (complicated, but unless you are very careful you can end up messing up your soil structure).

Thankyou so much, Squeezy for bumping (I had lost hope!) and Takver for such good info and link.

I'm quite excited about this now. [sad life]