Spent grain, compost bin and mice

[Cestrian]

We've got one of those dalek shaped compost bins made out of quite thick green plastic. Always put my hops and grain in there until one day took the lid off to see a big long tail sticking out of a 4" hole. Scared the fear of God out of me! The rats had chewed a hole in the back of the thing! On another occasion, I poured my hot spent grain on the grass heap at the end of the garden, a big rat crawled out and shook itself off like a wet dog. Glad I was wearing my brown undies at the time! Big traps loaded with peanut butter seen them off on both occasions!

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I'm like Clint mine goes in the garden waste bin.

 

[Cwrw666]

Feed mine to my sheep but I doubt the original poster has many of them in their back garden!

Did put them a few times in the compost bin just outside the house and immediately got rats in it but there again we fight a constant battle with the little bu**ers.

 

[terrym]

You could always try hotbin composting, they're closed units, so no way in for the rodents. Supposed to be faster too.

I'd not heard of hotbin composters, have you got one? If you have, it would be useful to hear of your experience. I did a bit of research on them, looked at a few Youtube vids and got the impression that although they are a good idea, you have to keep feeding them or the temperature drops and they are then only as good as a conventional plastic composter, and feeding them lots of stuff in the right proportion in winter to sustain the temperature will always be a problem. And although they look reasonably well made, upwards of £180 seemed a lot of money when you can usually pick up a Dalek composter for nothing off Freecycle like I did for use in the garden. It also works well, its full of red worms and there's plenty of black stuff that it produces from the bottom, although it takes a few months for it to pass through it. But I also have another one at my allotment and that doesn't function as well, because it doesn't get the same attention and regular feedstuff. The key to good composting as far as I can see is feeding it regularly with brown and green stuff in the right proportions and if you don't do that they are not very efficient.
Anyway I've now found someone with some chickens and they get my spent grain, and I get some eggs back now and again which works for us both.

 

[AdeDunn]

I don't have one know, but a friend does. They got around the winter problem by installing a thermostat and heater into theirs (with a remote thermometer so they can check the temperature from inside their house...). It may seem like a large initial investment, but these things will compost even cooked food etc (like a Bokashi) AND compostable plastics (vegeplast) that you straight up can't compost in a normal composter. Vegeplast isn't that widely used yet, in fact I've only seen it used for coffee pods so far here (Lavazza ecopods), but I suspect we will see it more as more places move away from traditional plastics in an attempt to virtue signal, and most councils, even if they have food composting, don't have the right sort of food composting.

Oh and yeah, we have 3 normal plastic Dalek composters same as you, we got them off one of those council special deal websites at our previous home (we had 4 originally, but gave 1 to my parents). We also have rats that keep making a nice home in 1 of them, and our Patterdales are too dumb to figure out to stand on the side with the burrow when I bang it repeatedly to scare the rats out of it, so the rats get a head start on them every time. Because of the rats, I bag and bin my spent grain, apart from the bit my wife uses for making dog biscuits that is.

 

[Old_P]

My wife dries the grist and makes muesli adding oats, nuts, dried fruit and things. Tastes great with fresh fruit salad, Greek yogurt and local honey.

 

[Deathstar]

Move goes in the brown bin for garden waste, it gets collected every 2 weeks by the council.

 

[MmmBeer]

Mine goes into the compost heap I built out of paving slabs, under the leylandii trees at the bottom of my garden.
I remember as a kid digging out the well rotted compost from my Dad's compost heap and a big rat started crawling out. I panicked and threw the garden fork at it. spearing it right through. Nasty!
Hopefully I won't have to worry about rodents, as my cat loves to prowl under the trees, waiting for a nice fat bird to drop down into her clutches.

 

[Crappyfish]

I put mine out as mulch it attracted every bloody fat wood pigeon in the area.

 

[MCF911]

Mine goes into the compost heap I built out of paving slabs, under the leylandii trees at the bottom of my garden.
I remember as a kid digging out the well rotted compost from my Dad's compost heap and a big rat started crawling out. I panicked and threw the garden fork at it. spearing it right through. Nasty!
Hopefully I won't have to worry about rodents, as my cat loves to prowl under the trees, waiting for a nice fat bird to drop down into her clutches.

Wow! I hate rats and afraid them

 

[Polcho]

I have a new ish children’s farm at the end of my road now. When I eventually do a real brew, I’ll be taking it there for the chicks and goats.

 

[Didge]

We use a "Green Joanna" hot composter, its brilliant and absolutely rodent safe, although it doesn't stop our cat finding mice elsewhere.

 

[AdeDunn]

We just fixed our rat problem in our composters:-

1 Moved them to the middle of the garden, well away from the edges, completely out in the open and in the clear.
2 Increased the moisture levels, stuff is breaking down faster, and it's not such a lovely place to make a warm and dry home now.
3 Aerate them regularly with a post hole auger, would you want to live somewhere where the roof kept been caved in with a big metal spike?
4 We already have 3 Patterdale terriers, and now the thingy thingies (as my wife insists we call them) have to travel across more open ground to reach the goodies, giving our girls more time to see and delete them (one of our girls has already deleted a sickly squirrel (not her sister, also called Squirrel, but an actual grey squirrel) and a young pigeon that landed in front of her....).

There's also claims that planting mint around your composters can help (supposedly the smell covers up the more tempting smells from the composter), not tried this yet as my mint plants are teeny tiny seedlings still (yup, grown them from seed, like a nutter... lol).

We live on a boundry between city and farmers fields though, so there are bound to be rats, and mice. We even had a nice lady out from the council once (after a rate ate it's way up out of the sewer, through the plastic pipe on our downstairs toilet, and into our house....), and she said the same, there are pretty much always rats around, you just have to do all that you can to try to make sure there's no tempting nibbles (or at least cover the smell up with things they don't like...) or nice warm homes provided for them. A rat in your garden is no biggy, panic if they get into your house basically. lol

 

[RichK]

I've got two black plastic compost bins. One, near the house which seems to get rodents in it when I add spent grain. The other, further down garden, doesn't have any visible signs.

 

[dcbrookes]

At my previous house we had a field of sheep at the bottom of the garden and they only had to see my bucket of spent grains to come running for a treat. I do not have that luxury now, so I put the mash waste in the garden compost bin, which is collected fortnightly.

 

[crowcrow]

I have a new ish children’s farm at the end of my road now. When I eventually do a real brew, I’ll be taking it there for the chicks and goats.

While my folks had chickens they went nuts for it - it would take a week or two for them to eat through it and in that time it would be kept in a sealed bucket and it would get really stinky. But the stinkier it was the more the chickens loved it!

 

[Hoppyland]

We don't just have mice around the compost bin. We have mice everywhere.
OK, these aren't house mice, they are tiny wood mice (we live in a hilly, wooded, moorlandy bit of rural Scotland).
As far as I'm concerned, they're welcome to the grains - I still get plenty of compost. The only thing I have to be totally sure is that there is no way into the house. Last year, I moved the kitchen sink and failed to totally seal the new drain route. It looked OK, but there was a tiny gap between the waste pipe and the wall. One that I couldn't see, but the mice surely could. Over the winter period they decided that our house was nice and warm, and had a plentiful supply of food. I put down live traps, and we caught over 40 over a 2 month period! They were taken into the woodland, across a river, to be released - so they were not coming back "home", this was part of the local population!
I do draw the line at rats, though. We haven't had any since we stopped keeping chickens, but I definitely shoot any I see (as with grey squirrels - a shame, but we have a lot more reds here & I hope to help keep it that way).

 

[Leon103]

While my folks had chickens they went nuts for it - it would take a week or two for them to eat through it and in that time it would be kept in a sealed bucket and it would get really stinky. But the stinkier it was the more the chickens loved it!

I throw what's left after 4 days

 

[RoomWithABrew]

We just fixed our rat problem in our composters:-

have to travel across more open ground to reach the goodies, giving our girls more time to see and delete them (one of our girls has already deleted a sickly squirrel (not her sister, also called Squirrel, but an actual grey squirrel) and a young pigeon that landed in front of her....).

Read this at first and thought you had some gun toting daughters on guard duty eliminating vermin!!

I've bought one of these it reloads itself and can take down 24 rats or mice before a new 16g CO2 is needed.


Have mine set up with a clever dog camera on it so whenever a critter is sighted it messages me and records the coup de grace.
In our first lockdown it was the only live sport available. Not so good for mice but has nailed a few as well.
Luckily we don't have many possums near us as I'd have to get the bigger brother of this that is designed for them. Possums about the size of
a small cat!!