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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 28, 2010 14:00:51 GMT -5
The don't compost meat rule always seems a little odd to me though I get that, especially in certain areas - where bears roam for example, people don't want to attract certain critters to the pile though I find critters often root around in totally vegan piles too or at least the squirrels round our parts have been seen on more than one occasion scurrying along the telephone wires with apple cores in their mouths. Also, dead animals commonly appear in my yard including the aforementioned squirrel. I rarely disturb them unless they are someplace unsightly and they disappear without much to do.
The disease issue is the second most quoted reason.
The last reason that I have heard is that the high fat content can slow down the decomposition cycle.
Fixes I've heard:
Meat: small amounts of meat (especially cooked but even raw) can disappear harmlessly in a well managed pile, especially a hot one which would lower the disease present (as would previous cooking). Make the box critter proof or a heavy lidded pit for composting. Use a sealed composter designed for these products. Don't eat meat :0
Bones: Boiled bones used for making stock can be crushed and added much like bone meal
Fat: Small amounts of fat are usually broken down in a compost pile but large amounts can suffocate the critters required for the work. What else can you do with vegetable based oils?
Dairy products: Most common issue I've heard is that they are stinky when composting. I've never had that much of a problem with this in my working pile but some people trench compost or cover smelly bits with soil. Occasionally I've put a layer of soil on top especially if it is getting a bit soggy.
I've also read a couple references to vermicomposting small amounts of dairy, oil and meat (even raw) though most people who do it recognize that it is contraversial. Heck, I keep reading people who only compost grass and leaves or maybe a bit of uncooked veggie byproduct so I think there is quite a range of composters out there.
Thoughts? Ideas? Techniques? Rebuttals?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 28, 2010 15:16:41 GMT -5
The farms around here are primarily dairy farms and cattle ranches and the hay/grain fields needed to support them. We have a half dozen cheese plants nearby that create a huge amount a waste dairy products....
Many tanker trucks full of dairy waste leave the valley every day. They go to a remote area and spray the milk onto the fields as fertilizer. The field is unplanted during the treatment. It is tilled regularly. The next year, grain or potatoes are grown on the field.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Dec 28, 2010 15:27:38 GMT -5
Thoughts? Ideas? Techniques? Rebuttals? Terra preta... We've had a number of carcasses in our pit so far this year. I have observed far fewer flies and the smell has not been as bad as last year. I think it's because we've resolved the issue of maintaining a long term slow burn of the contents with the addition of the pipe inserted at the bottom of the pile. |
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Post by seedywen on Dec 28, 2010 16:16:53 GMT -5
There seems to be a wide world of composting beliefs and practices.
I compost both dairy and meat.
Yes, there are reasons NOT to, as mentioned above, so, when doing so, I try to find away to solve the negatives..
Basically I compost both because it goes against the grain to ship the material off in plastic bags to be someone else's problem. Plus if I have such products, mouldering away for the month or two, it takes to get a full bag of garbage, it's like an open invitation for a bear or racoon, to trash my out-buildings or garbage cans.
So I compost this material in as 'hot' a compost as I can build in two 4 foot by 4 foot by 5 foot high sturdily constructed boxes. This means paying attention to the carbon/nitrogen ratio of the other materials added to the boxes.
Both boxes have heavy hinged covers to prevent the bears in the vicinity from helping themselves or tearing the boxes up to get at the compost. As it does 'smell' in the early stages especially as fresh goat, chicken, duck and rabbit manure is added. Plus leaves, seaweed, hay and sawdust bedding, clippings, soil etc.
When I butcher, I always try to have one of the boxes half empty so that the hooves, hides, skeletons, etc. go in deep. Note each year, which area is the primary burial in the box so that that area is not disturbed for a year. Meanwhile the composting material on top gets turned every few weeks to incorporate more air and add water as needed.
I love seeing steam rise off the piles even in the winter!
Which they often do, unless there's a prolonged cold spell which shuts down decomposition until the weather warms up again.
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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 29, 2010 9:20:24 GMT -5
Anyone have any tips on how to deal with vegetable oil - other than putting it into a converted diesal engine that is. I don't have that much! I've heard it used as a supplement for lifestock.
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Post by seedywen on Dec 29, 2010 20:37:24 GMT -5
Do you mean vegetable oil, left over from deep frying or bacon grease, Telsing?
I don't usually have that much but anything like that gets put into my daily chicken-food, 'jumbo'.
They have regular chicken food as well. However I chop up every vegetable peeling, apple core, bit of bread, left-overs, etc. and add some whole wheat flour, a little powdered milk, maybe a spare egg and that's their 'treat'. They go wild for the connoction.
Some days, the jumbo looks so appetizing, my husband thinks it's for dinner. Until he spots the egg shells, that is!
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Post by steev on Dec 29, 2010 21:50:24 GMT -5
Some people just don't like crunchy food; no accounting for taste.
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Post by paquebot on Dec 29, 2010 21:51:58 GMT -5
One of my best and biggest compost piles devoured 7 deer heads and left only a few bits of lower jaws. 3 or 4 small skins also went into that pile and total vanished. At least 50-60 rib cages were picked clean by birds and then chewed up either with a mower or shredder and then into the compost. Present tumbler batch has one squirrel plus all of the offal off two wild rabbits. My compost includes blood meal and bone meal but in crude form. It's just that I don't have to buy either.
Martin
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coppice
gardener
gardening curmudgeon
Posts: 149
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Post by coppice on Dec 29, 2010 22:49:09 GMT -5
I composted meats, fats, animal by products (of butchering). When done in moderation they all broke down fine in a suburban compost bin. I think if I had commercial friers I would solicit their collection on craigs list or free cycle for somebody who made biodesel.
I've composted the product of beauty salons in bales of human hair, it was objectionable.
I've composted rurally and had visiting bear.
In 40 years of composting visitation of *dreaded* (others emphasis) rats, I got one visiting released lab rat. s/he got trapped and drowned. Of all the 'visitors' neighbor dogs were the most argumentative, and troublesome. I have called animal control. Skunks, raccoon, possum (and for that matter) bear all were reasonably discrete and would snack after my deposit. No wild animal was destructive of my bins.
Much of the bug-aboo and flack I've gotten was on gardenig forums around composting were from what I will call 'organic pharasee's. You'll live longer if you ignore them.
Long ago before gardenweb became a wasteland proffesor Dirt composted several tons of shucked oysters. IMO a little common sence and an ability to mix high nitrogen and high carbon composts together can be done to your advantage.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Dec 30, 2010 0:57:03 GMT -5
We didn't have any corpses for the first TP pile. This second pile has goats, dogs, possums, guineas, a raccoon... But now you got me wondering how much will the meat input affect the end product compared to the end product of the first pit.
As for cooking oil, it goes on the pile and it works very nicely to get it lit when it goes out.
Never had any animal encroach on the pile until we let the birds out of the coops. They spread stuff far and wide when it's cooled down...
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Post by wildseed57 on Dec 30, 2010 11:11:06 GMT -5
I compost something differently than others all veg. oil, meat scraps, dear critters go into a burn barrel that I have set up for burning just those things it gets very hot and anything that has bones are pretty much reduced to ash. I did this after I had a dead chicken removed from the middle of the pile where it was pretty much composted and or reduced down quite a bit, the offender was a stray dog in the middle of the night, its paw prints told the story. So now I take care of meaty things and the oil helps to burn them down. Large pieces of wood is slow burned into charcoal and either mixed into the compost or added on top of the raised beds which is later covered by the compost. I also do a slow compost method of laying down a few inches of grass clippings, leaves, straw and so on to the top soil around the raised beds to break down over the course of the season. I do this when I have just to much composting material I find that with all the worms and soil making bugs that it gets broken down fairly fast even when it gets fairly cold.
George W.
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Post by seedywen on Dec 30, 2010 20:13:54 GMT -5
Last few winters, there's been a rat that's made the compost boxes, a winter retreat. Toasty warm perhaps, with uncomposted tid-bits to snack on. Sometimes when I open the lid, I try to get him with the pitch-fork. We both have a good laugh...I always miss!
On the growing food for chickens thread, someone mentioned how much chickens like to eat meat. I didn't really believe this, until one day, while uncovering a large outdoor compost pile, a bunch of mice scampered every which way.
My favorite chicken, Red, caught one of those mice in mid-air.
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Post by grunt on Dec 30, 2010 20:48:22 GMT -5
It looks like chicken-football when a live mouse gets loose in the chicken run = they have a low set of rules though. You are allowed to grab the "ball" and try to pull it away fro whomever has it. Kinda hard on the "ball".
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Post by mjc on Dec 30, 2010 21:35:53 GMT -5
It looks like chicken-football when a live mouse gets loose in the chicken run = they have a low set of rules though. You are allowed to grab the "ball" and try to pull it away fro whomever has it. Kinda hard on the "ball". I always thought they were playing rugby... |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 30, 2010 22:34:19 GMT -5
So last summer I was digging in the garden at a friends house... And I came across these little lumps that were so lightweight that I just had to investigate them... Turns out they were mummies.
I had inadvertently dug up her hamster cemetery from ten years ago. They had been wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil. Out here in the desert we often get cow mummies laying on top of the ground for many years, but this was the first time I ever dug one out of the ground. And this was even in a damp area.
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