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["Gloria Morris" <gloriamorris59 AT gmail.com>]

Too funny, Marie! Louie was a great dog!!!

Yes, I had to compost sheep and sheep parts, back when. I was doing
direct-to-consumer sales of lamb. I delivered the lamb to the processor, and
the customer picked up the packaged meat. The down side of it was that I had
to pick up the pelt, head, legs, and internal organs, as they could not sell
these to the rendering plant. The pelt was not a problem, as that was
something that could be tanned and made into a value added thing, which I
could sell. The legs and organs were good food for the dogs! BUT, the heads
were more of a problem, as the dogs could not really handle those before
flies became bothersome. And, there's the YUCK factor. There's just
something a bit gross in giving critter heads to dogs for chew toys.

THEN I discovered how nicely they compost. I also had to compost entire
carcasses. Now, back then, my compost was much larger than someone would
have in a suburban back yard! But my compost now is larger than that too! I
don't think I could likely compost a whole ram in my current compost pile,
but I know I could easily do a smaller critter. Extension office Master
Gardeners have kittens when one discusses such things as the composting of
meat scraps, or, horrors, whole critters. I had that training, so I know we
were supposed to scold these ideas. But farmers do this routinely, and I too
can vouch that it works beautifully - you just need a large compost pile.

Gloria

On Jan 27, 2008 3:38 PM, Marie McHarry <mmcharry AT gmail.com> wrote:

>  On Jan 27, 2008 3:28 PM, Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com> wrote:
>
> > Adding animal parts is not recommended for a garden compost pile. I
> > have always buried animals in garden beds, deeper than normal
> > cultivation.
>
> Animals do compost nicely, however, if you have plenty of manure and a
> frontend loader to heap it up on the carcasses. My only problem is
> that with the arrival of Anatolians who like to dig, some thick bones
> have gotten dug up. I came home one afternoon to find a row of skulls
> lined up in the driveway (Louie was very orderly in some respects). It
> probably caused the Jehovah Witnesses to hurry on to the next place.
>
> Without the help of Anatolian excavtors, most of the rest of a goat is
> totally decomposed in days.
>
> Marie
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