In article m, "Penny
Morgan" wrote:

The rule of thumb that I learned about composting manure is that any animal
that is a carnivore (meat eating), do NOT use their waste
on gardens or in compost. Any animal that is herbivore (plant eating), DO
use in compost and gardens. I guess that's why chicken, cow, horse, etc.
seems to be the poop of choice for fertilizers.

The problem of e-coli in herbivore poo & salmonella from chickenshit means
it's JUST AS DANGEROUS as dog & cat poo with its potential to carry
toxocara to people. Which is to say, it's not terribly dangerous if you're
not sticking poo-encrusted fingers in your mouth or up your nose. These
superstitions against dog & cat poo are hard to weed out of the gardening
community! The distinction commonly made between carnivore poo "bad"
herbivore poo "good" is completely baseless. One of the riskiest exposures
is e-coli in cowpies, & salmonella in chickenshit. Well-composted shit is
safe, regardless of the animal it plopped out of.

Don't worry, I had a stupid neighbor argue
with me that her cat poop in her gardens were fertilizing her plants. It
didn't take long to see flies, maggots and dead plants. HA!

Do a search on composting and manure and I bet you'll find some info on why
certain animal waste is not used.

Do a search on the web & you can find that black people have lower IQs
than white people, that guns don't kill people, & flying saucer
kidnappings are real.

Most of what can be read throughout the Web on this topic is, err, crap.
But this page is pretty good:
http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/ga...omposting.html
It notes that thermophilic activity at 130 degrees is sufficient to kill
ALL pathogens in dog & cat poo, with five turns at three day intervals.
This is based on actual tests at the University of Oregon. Several other
univeristy websites have contrary information -- none of them did tests so
just posted opinions without checking the actual studies. And of course
the generic garden sites are just the lamest information imaginable,
mostly rumors & myths & no facts whatsoever. The University of Oregon
study showed that temperatures ROUTINELY reach a high enough temperature
in any well-mixed pile, it is not the least bit difficult to do safely.


Penny

The credible reason to avoid fresh dog & cat feces is it carries diseases
(as does herbivore poo). Yet the worries are the same as one would have
from picking up your dog's poops while walking the dog (as laws require),
or cleaning the catbox, which are if anything RISKIER activities. The
number of POSSIBLE diseases humans can get from touching the animals
themselves is so long & scary that a full accounting would probably cause
some people to get rid of all their pets immediately. People who practice
good family hygiene are not at much at risk. I'll repost a commentary on
composting dog poo:

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MANY people compost their own dog's poo. Some people have thought there is
a risk to doing this, though a much smaller risk than having a dog at all
since pathogens are much more likely to be passed living animal to animal
(& the dog is equally likely to get something from its human). Some have
said it is best to let the turds sun-dry to kill any possible pathogenic
microbes, THEN toss into the compost. Actually, as it turns out, all
worries are pretty much groundless.

Good composting methods DO kill pathogens in dogshit contrary to
superstition. There wouldn't be a big Zoo Doo project in so many American
zoos if pathogens survived the composting process for manure composts. It
is not quite exactly the "heat" per se that breaks down matter in a
compost, the heat is a natural by-product of the endeavorings of the
bacteria, funguses & actinomycetes, the one-celled little critters &
primitive plantlifes that cause the fermentation of carboyhydrates as they
yum-yum-eatem-up their way through any kind of rotting matter turning it
from a pile of Zoo Doo or Dog Turds into rich sweet-smelling earth.

A fairly major study of this was undertaken in Alaska largely for the
benifit of dog mushers, whose kennels & training farms accumulate huge
dogshit piles, & wanted to know DEFINITIVELY if an almost pure dog-manure
compost would be a safe, healthy, high-nutrient garden soil enrichment.

Ann Rippy's Alaska study with scientific method set out to determine how
great a ratio of dogshit (nitrogen source) to woodchips or shredded straw
(carbon source) was most effective. The wrong mix was not necessarily any
less likely to be effective, but the right ratio speeded the process along
most handily. Ann Rippy found that two-thirds dogshit to one-third carbon
source is best. The heat-range in the compost was somewhere around 150
degrees (130 to 170) Fahrenheit. When temperatures fell lower, "turning"
or otherwise introducing oxygen to the mix got the temperature back up.
This temperature is more than sufficient to kill Toxicara canis (ringworm)
which is the most heat-tolerant of all pathogens ever likely to be in
dogshit. It took a scant three weeks, and only two turns to keep oxygen
level up, before the manure pile smelled like a perfectly sweet compost
pile, I wish I could make the same claim for my compost pile which doesn't
even have any shit in it. Hence Ann Rippy's study concluded: Compost from
dogshit is good, safe, & healthy to use for enriching garden soil.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/