[Small Farmer]

Found this while looking for something else.  In England this would of course be totally illegal unless someone spends half a million proving it works

http://www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/compostsheep.html

[the great composto]

The theory of the method is widely proven but with a whole carcass?  Surely cutting it up someway would speed up the process and you are still going to be left with bones.   We are so strict with environmental health that there would be doubts about consumption of the foodstuff grown in the compost.
If the heat in the composting process isnt high enough to kill any pathogens this could go badly wrong.
A proper study would have to take place to convince me.

[Fleecewife]

Half a century ago carcases were flung on the muck heap and mixed in by front loader.  No attempt was made to prevent run-off, of which there was plenty.   I'm not convinced that sawdust would prevent run-off of the large amount of liquid produced by a decomposing whole adult animal, although if it's in the middle of the heap it might just drain downwards - into the watercourse?   I suspect also that the appropriate organisms needed for total and efficient decomposition would not be at home in sawdust.  Proper burial underground would still be preferable, although in Britain we now have a good incineration industry.  The potential fertility of decomposition is lost during incineration of course, but is preserved in both burial and this composting process.

[clydesdaleclopper]

There s chap in the states at Sugar Mountain Farm who does this with cattle.

[robert waddell]

that will be the guy that is raising pigs on grass and has everybody well nearly everybody (not me )thinking it can be done in the UK
in the old days the pigs were used as animal disposal     
even if you did prove this system worked it would not be allowed in the UK

[Small Farmer]

So we take our fallen stock 20 miles to a rendering plant where it's incinerated.  Just how sustainable is that?  The nearest hunt kennels is 25 miles.


We've started a training programme for the local wildlife so they don't just die in the hedges like they used to but stagger over to a convenient spot where they can be collected for proper disposal.

[robert waddell]

small farmer i don't know where you get your ideas from but fallen stock in Scotland go to make bio diesel and other products   it is farmers that have the incinerators that saves them the cost of disposal
i hope you have started the badgers and foxes first

[Small Farmer]

Robert. 


I'm probably wrong but I have a suspicion that an awful lot of deed sheep never make it to a any form of "official" disposal.  For sure the on-farm burial of horses and cows has fallen dramatically, but smaller stock?

[robert waddell]

i am sure horses can be buried yet    cattle cannot  unless you are in the highlands and islands there is exemption for certain areas      any animal that is not disposed of correctly  that owner is in breach of two laws at least     the wild dogs act     and the disposal of fallen stock                    also depends if you are in a sea eagle area    they are in before your time limit on disposal

[the great composto]

Not sure its ok to bury horses because Defra make a definition of pets can be buried but other animals cannot. So even if you keep sheep / horse as a pet then it needs to be disposed of using fallen animals legislation.  (some scottish exemptions).

This also covers fallen chickens ( if i remember correctly). but not cooked or raw chicken carcass remains if you decide to eat them.

[Small Farmer]

Presumably Defra also want to ban composting toilets. 


We have a number of deep (c80ft) Victorian cess pits on our land which didn't get wet in the recent monsoon season - one reason why we had hosepipe bans upto a fortnight ago.   One would really struggle round here to pollute a watercourse by burial let along composting.

[southernskye]

Morning all,

Are there not small scale composting solutions that take all waste (meat scraps and bones included) such as, IIRC, Green Cone + others?

If they work on a smaller scale then could they not be up-scaled to do the same on a large scale so long as the contents were reduced to smaller physical individual parts? Just in the same way as composting a whole tree branch would take years and years but, reduce the size (chip it?) and it is composted quite swiftly.


Rgds
Sskye.

[Fleecewife]

   I think I'd rather just get the knacker in than spend a day chopping a dead horse into little bits 

[Mel Rice]

Round here you can still sell horses (alive) to the butcher!!! Ive already told my boy that and repeated it when hes in a bad mood

[robert waddell]