I use soiled bedding from my poultry barn and run/yard (wood shavings, chicken- and waterfowl poop) along with compost from kitchen scraps, garden prunings and leaves. When I had goats and a rabbit, their poop was the
creme de la creme of ingredients too.
Some of it is completely composted (kitchen scraps, leaves) while the barn waste is only partially composted and is used as topdressing. I put down a thick layer in the late fall, and again in late winter. By April the top inch still looks like bedding, but below it is rich compost. Topdressing during cool weather keeps the compost from getting hot and burning the roots (microbes work much more slowly, so the composting process is more gradual).
Cady G.
"Killed two..." -- Seiji Miyaguchi/Kyuzo