Dog feces in compost?

[Rez]

Right. As I pointed out, roundworms are in ordinary soil everywhere, in fact the most common way dogs pick up fresh infestations is walking on dirt then licking their feet. (Tho a dog on a meat-based diet will have a gut water balance and immune response that keeps ascarids at a very low level; also, there is some evidence that a low population of "normal" parasites are *required* for truly sound intestinal balance. Which a lot of breeders had already noticed, since 100%-parasite-free puppies tend to have more issues with unexplained diarrhea.)

Right. The odd lump here and there from reasonably healthy critters (or dead critters from natural causes) won't hurt anything and will provide concentrated nitrogen. But this is different from trying to make compost from materials that are *primarily* poop (or corpses :) In nature, poop gets dropped here and there, is a very tiny minority of the total, and is worked upon by all the stuff around it. It's not piled all in one big heap. (Tho Garden Cat is making the attempt... she's got two distinct *piles* going in my side yard -- not that it's going to hurt the desert sand much.)

BTW, some years ago someone did some research on why certain swaths of Europe, most notably in Germany and France, have such spectacularly lush growth, above and beyond what is typical for the region. A glance at historical maps, and some digging, made the reason obvious: these are areas that have been battlegrounds for centuries, and have a rather high concentration of, um, composted corpses (blood is a wonderful fertilizer!) and rusted armour.

And there is somewhat more risk in over-protecting a child from their environment anyway, as the immune system *requires* a certain level of challenges to develop proper and normal immunity to the ordinary gunk of Real Life. Frex, it's been discovered that kids who grow up around dogs and cats have a much lower incidence of allergies as adults, because their immune systems got a useful level of challenge for developing to best performance and least chance of overreaction (allergy being essentially an immune overreaction). Eating a bit of healthy garden dirt now and then isn't going to hurt a kid, in fact it's far more likely to be good for 'em.

~REZ~

[Rez]

Some breeds need more protein, which tends to increase the problem.

Oh yes, anything with protein in it, pigs will eat (including each other).

Kennels teach one a great deal about effluvia :)

Accessability, remember! Since they can get at the compost, they don't feel the need to consume from one another's leavings. And with only 4 dogs, you're below the social threshold point. Some dogs will eat dirt instead, but you'll notice they have a particular patch of dirt that they eat from all the time, not just random dirt.

Yeah, my tenant's Golden sometimes gets "toomuchhorseshititis" from chowing down at the manure pile (even tho it's bone dry and a couple years old now, and most nearly resembles lumpy lawn clippings). Screws up the balance of intestinal flora and the dog gets the trots. A couple days of metronidazole (or pretty much any handy oral antibiotic, which kind isn't critical) takes care of the problem -- you don't want to kill all the gut bacteria, just reduce the total load to normal levels. You can order metronidazole as "Fish-Zole" from wholesale pet supply outfits. I usually use valleyvet.com

~REZ~

[flick]

behave

loose

knows ONE

and

do,

consistency

definite

I think it's cruel to keep a dog kenneled day in, day out with little social interaction - whether it's with other dogs or its human "pack." But that's just my opinion. Dogs appear to adapt to that type of life, though I think they're "happier" as I said with more social interaction than just what's necessary to feed and water and stretch their legs once a day.

As you so rightly point out, dogs need consistency.

it. You

"abused" dog.

in a

whatever

Bravo! I'm a volunteer in rescue and have a number of dogs here - one of which I know for a fact was abused and neglected for the first 3 years of his life (both from his condition and from the abuser's spouse, who turned him over to us). He had scars, he was chronically underfed, I had to cut the chain off his neck with bolt cutters and treat the cuts because it had been way too tight.

And you'd never, never know it, except possibly for a little bit of temporary shyness around men. And that shyness passes in 2 mi nutes. He's a Good Dog.

abused

spooky,

first

sorry

flexible, and

Again, bravo! I've been having a discussion in another group about dogs that are supposedly "stressed" because they're in shelters, and dogs that are in shelters long-term until they "go nuts." I keep saying that a shelter may well be better/less stressful than what the dog knew before; if they've been in there a while, they may have adjusted; they may have been nuts before they got there; and if a shelter *drives* dogs nuts to stay there long-term, they shouldn't be there long-term, it's cruel. IME, the time that dogs are "stressed" is when they're adjusting to a New Life. For a dog with a good temperament, that stress appears to pass in 2-3 days when they come here.

But the other "rescue people" like to feel useful, I guess, and they disagree. I'd've thought it would be enough to take a discarded good dog and find it a new home, without assuming that the nutso dogs are victims of abuse or "shelter stress."

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[flick]

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I really appreciate the posts you've made in this topic, with scientific knowledge. Thanks.

I compost the dog doo here, because there's no other reasonable way to dispose of the large quantities, and it's nice to know that I'm not committing some horrible environmental sin ;-).

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[Bill]

Thank you, flick. Except for my own measurements in my own compost piles meant to guide my own actions, I can not claim to have contributed anything original of scientific value to the overall discussion.

Google is your friend. Especially, google is your friend when looking up 'humanure'. After you have read the whole Humanure Handbook, a lot of websites with their elaborate 'shopping lists' of permitted and prohibited materials are going to strike you as 'guesswork' (or worse) ... and erroneous guesswork at that.

I don't approach this as a religion, but there are natural cycles in nutrients that have been going on since life drew its first breath on this planet. So long as mankind brings a little intelligence to the table, he can use this cycle to his advantage.

[Bill]

True ... but you would be ill-advised to make compost from strictly high-nitrogen materials from any source. A pile of grass clippings will eventually turn into a pile of compost (as will a pile of elephant doo-doo or Roman soldiers) ... but woe to the poor soul who disturbs such a pile on a hot day before the process is complete!

A pile made completely from high carbon materials would have problems too. Not the same problems but, after a few years, it would become very evident that the piles were working just a little bit on the slow side.

I assumed that the person wanting to add doggie poop to their compost pile would be adding it at some reasonable ratio to the rest of the ingredients. If not, then the whole discussion is inverted and I would have to urge them not to make a pile primarily of doggie-doo. Not because of disease but because of stench.

In Genesis, God tells Adam that he is going to make the soil less fertile. Armeggedon, with its incredible carnage, is a part of the process of cleansing the planet and renewing it. As both a gardner and a Christian who spends a great deal of time contemplating the scriptures, I have long assumed that Armeggedon marks the time and manner when the fertility of the soil is restored. The bodies (roughly 2/3 of the planet, if I did my math right) will be too many to bury. God has told the surviving remnant that their enemies will become dust at their feet. Apparently this has a literal fulfillment. They will simply decompose where they fall ... like the green swaths of Europe.

[flick]

compost piles

contributed anything

looking up

lot of

prohibited

and

Yeah, I ran into the Humanure Handbook when I googled a phrase like "composting poop" or "composting manure." And after I read parts of it, it just made *sense.* At the time, I was in the city and trying to dispose of dog doo. It made my trash too heavy for the disposal people to pick up (they had a weight limit), and took up space in the cans that we needed for household garbage, so I needed to do something and came up with the trash can composting method.

There are a couple pages out there specifically about composting dog doo, but I don't have the URLs handy.

I get a kick out of the sites that say not to put meat and bones in the compost heap, but then there are people who compost whole chickens, and there's info out there on how to do it right. Duh.

Carcasses came to my mind the other day as I was faced with the hassle of burying a dead animal. I have between 5 and 10 acres, and I would rather have left it unburied, well away from the house and where we hike, and let nature dispose of it more quickly. This time, the dead critter was too heavy for me to move very far.

Digging a hole that won't get opened in the course of gardening, say, is a darn deep hole and time consuming, and I've had the unpleasant experience of a carcass "floating" up through the ground, and having to re-bury it. Blech. How much quicker it would be to put the carcass over in the corner, so to speak, and avoid it until it was cleaned down to bone, which I imagine wouldn't be real long here in the rural South.

Lest it sound like I'm a serial killer or something - small farm animals.

cycles in

breath on this

table, he

My main thought is not to overload the local ecosystem, if those are the right words.

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