Compost question

[Chris]

In all the books and papers I have read, it seems that the only reason to avoid adding meat scraps to a compost pile is to not attract unwanted critters like possums and raccoons. Is this the case? Or is there a biological reason not to add animal matter to a compost pile?

Thanks

Chris

[Brooklyn1]

Meat takes about ten times as long as vegetable matter to compost and during all that time ROTTING MEAT STINKS. My composter is too great a distance from neighbors for them to smell it but still I don't want to smell rotting meat either. Meat composts far more efficiently inside carnivores, I feed meat scraps to crows and other carrion eaters who in return fertilize my property. I save larger quantities of meat trimmings in my freezer for feeding birds during winter.

[songbird]

yes, most compost piles are open to the air meaning flies can get in. flies can transmit diseases quite easily from the rotting meat to a sandwich you have on a plate on the porch.

i'm not particularly germophobic, but some things i really don't want to encourage...

there is a lot to be said for feeding crows in the same spot so they will come through on their morning rotation and take care of any scraps you leave for them. i use the same location for trapped mice and they are gone quite quickly.

larger roadkill that we don't want to smell i bury deeply enough that they get most decay over with long before the topside critters and plants have a crack at the results.

we don't really cook meat here that often these days so it has not been much of an issue.

if you'd like a natural method for dealing with meat scraps there are certain kinds of worms that will do the feasting for you. i don't have a list of species handy, but i'm sure they're out there.

songbird

[jellybean stonerfish]

Disease.

[Chris]

While I am not disputing you (since I never composted any animal product except egg shells) I really would like to see some kind of evidence instead of bald assertion. I spent many years as a field biologist, and while I realize there are lots of scavengers out there, if it took 10 times as long for animal products (excluding bone, which probably takes even longer) it seems to me that when I was humping the national forests and wildlife refuges, I should have been ankle deep in unrotted animal carcasses.

Now, I am not talking about tossing whole turkeys into the compost. I am talking a few steak or burger scraps here and there.

Decomposition, like any other chemical reaction, depends mainly on two things: temperature and surface area. The higher the temperature (to a degree, pardon the pun) the faster it goes. The smaller the item (with its higher relative surface area on which bacteria and fungi can work) the faster it goes.

Chris

[Chris]

Thanks. What diseases would those be?

Chris

[FarmI]

[Nad R]

For small amounts of bone. I have heard it is best to use real good blender are grinder that turns the bones to a powder. Then put it in a garden for the minerals. Not sure about this though.