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dog poop in the worm farm?

 
Posts: 58
Location: Los Angeles
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saw an old thread about composting dog poop.
anybody use dog poop in the worm farm?
thanks
 
pollinator
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Location: Englehart, Ontario, Canada
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Yes, for several years. No problems. Just make sure to allow the product enough time to finish. ie when getting towards full I fee only with food scraps for at least 2 months. This makes sure the poop is fully degraded.
 
gardener
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Are you looking to do something like add dog poo daily? it's pretty rancid, but i'm not saying the worms can't take it. I'm just saying you'll get back what they dont digest if there's better options in the pile. Your better off with digging a hole then putting a bottomless bucket in back to the soil level with a lit on it and tossing in some septic digester powder every once in awhile. Worms will come and get it when they want to but they can also walk away when it doesn't suit them, I wouldn't subject your worms to carnivore poo especially if it's from commercial dog food. Grow some nice flowers around the bucket lid, and make the lid out of wood so nobody falls in. For some reason biological turnover happens so fast these days in my yard I can't find the dog poo anymore because the slugs have gotten to it.
 
Max Kennedy
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So long as there isn't enough poo to cause extensive heating, or there is at least somewhere the worms can get away from the heat, worms actually love the poo, whether herbivore or carnivore. Biologically they really don't care so long as there isn't something like the Chinese contamination of milk with melamine or other poisonous man made substances to deal with they digest everything in the poo. Worms naturally feed on fecal matter regardless of the source. If you don't believe do a trial I have done with a few worms, 20-30, and moistened shredded paper mixed with dog food. In no time you will have excellent vermicompost and no trace of the original dog food will remain, the same is true after the food passes through the digestive tract of the dog. The combination of bacterial digestion and the enzymes in the guts of the worm destroy virtually all pathogenic organisms. Human poo is if anything worse and it is quite simple and straightforward to convert that to humanure even without the beneficial action of worms. With worms a 2 year process takes a matter of months. You will want to mix in the "browns" of traditional composting, such as paper or straw, but that is a normal part of vermicomposting.
 
M Marx
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Thanks great ideas.
Dogs are omnivores, however. I'm sure you've seen them eat grass. Ours loves fruit. Mollison said dogs like loquat and it will make a nice fertile seed ball when dogs eat it.
I didn't check the "seedball" but our dog loves loquats, apples, watermelon.
Ohhh and she can't help herself with lemongrass -- I will let her in the garden sometimes for a healthy pack nap and even while sitting at my feet, chomp chomp. That stuff is pricey -- bad dog.
I know one dog that is a serious strawberry theif. But that is a matter of training the owners to put in a fence of some type.
 
Saybian Morgan
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If you've got a dog that eats real food and not canned rubbish it's fine, I have pulled clods of undigested cow manure out of a pile of worm castings after 4 months and I can't imagine that in the form of dog poo. It was the base base layer in the start of a flow through worm bin, so when i think dog poo i see a kennels worth of poo going into a worm bin by the bucket loads at a time. I feed my worm bin in batches of about 6 cubic feet of rabbit poo deep bedding cleanout so when i saw that in dog poo my mind said no thanks. If you got 1 dog you don't have enough to make my nightmare come true.
 
Max Kennedy
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3 dogs and nary a problem in the last 4 years. Just good compost.
 
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Location: Northern Tablelands, NSW, Australia
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When my mother was living with just her dogs for company I set up a worm bin for the dog poop. They were fed dog poop exclusively, plus newspaper or other browns of course, and it worked a treat. The bottom tray only ever had worm castings in it. No evidence of what they were fed.
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