From lcboggs@mail.mrsars.usda.gov Thu Oct 7 12:47:54 1999 Date: Thu, 07 Oct 99 10:55:39 CST From: lcboggs@mail.mrsars.usda.gov To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Re[2]: Composting animal parts Yes, composting livestock offal and even entire carcasses is legal in many states and is becoming more common as rendering plants decline in number and reliability and the number of carcasses becomes too many to bury in the "back 40". A couple of University of Minnesota Experiment Stations (Waseca, Morris, others?) are composting full-grown sheep, pigs, even cows. (Composting Animal Mortality Resource notebook available from WCROC 320-589-1711.) Fat and bones can take longer to decay than meat, but will still degrade and transform into usable compost in a couple of months. I think meat and fat are not recommended for home composting because the piles tend to be pretty small and do not get hot enough for long enough to kill potential pathogens. Lynne Carpenter-Boggs Soil Microbiologist USDA-ARS 803 Iowa Ave. Morris, MN 56267 320-589-3411 x141 FAX 320-589-3787 lcboggs@mail.mrsars.usda.gov ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: RE: Composting animal parts Author: ,"Cole, Ralph" at Internet Date: 10/7/1999 10:08 AM Composting - I'm not "Mr. Compost", but we compost all of our offal and feathers from poultry and rabbit processing days. Composting poultry mortalities is a NRCS subsidized recommendation. Several states have booklets describing the procedures. Seems like I have seen precautions against placing fat in small (home-scale) compost bins, but don't recall the rationale. Grace to you. To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail