Scat Composting

I get lots of bear and coon scat each night. Can it be composted like regular animal manure?

That's a great question. It would seem to me that compost Temps get high enough to kill pathogens but I can't tell you for certain. When we add manure from animals that aren't ruminates I typically add lots of green to heat things up!

I wish I had better answers for you but you could easily have a second pile just for mast crops you won't eat perhaps oaks or for wood producing species and ornamentals.

Here is a similar thread that may help.

https://permies.com/t/449/composting/Composting-Pet-Waste#5067

Thanks

"Does a bear shit in the woods?"

It doesn't seem to do any harm there, and the woods is full of great humus. I use anything like that that I find. The feces of my cats is the only thing I'm cautious about and even that, I'm starting to toss out into a pile instead of send to the dump, just to see what becomes of it.

I’ve been using non-ruminant/equine manures for crops where there is no splash problem when it rains, thus any problem with the manure doesn’t end up on the food. I don’t bother trying to compost it since we don’t have much volume of such manure. I simply use a shovel and scoop up a shovelful of dirt to make the hole, put in the manure, then cover back over with the dirt. Quick and easy. We dispose of dog, cat, and pig manure this way.

Crops we use this method on are flowers, orchard trees, pigeon peas, trellised pipinola, pole beans and peas, corn. Honestly, most of this manure gets used in the orchard. And since trees are primarily surface feeders, we don’t dig a deep hole. And the hole goes along the drip line. It’s only if we happen to get an excess that we then fertilize the flower beds. To date we haven’t had extra to use on the other crops, though they are on our list for use if perchance we get a windfall of such manures.

Hm! Well I assume that all wild scat has a pretty good selection of parasites. Personally I don't think I would trust a composting process to neutralize everything.

But the next time you're having a char burn, you could cook up the scat in a big pot on the coals, and use it to douse the char. That's mineral fertilizer right there, ready for the addition of friendly biological organisms.

Just have a ready answer if some wise-guy neighbour sees you cooking and asks "hey, what's for dinner?"