Composting Pet Waste

paul wheaton wrote:
Alkaline soil .....

I do seem to remember something about how e coli was not a beef issue until they were fed a nearly exclusive grain diet.  This made their poop more acidic and, therefore, more hospitable to e coli. 

Corroboration?

Collaboration by way of Michael Pollan, who concurs with Joel's assessment. The alkaline soil issue is still up for grabs...

I finally convinced the missus that this is a real issue (thanks to this thread  ) and we will begin composting in ground as soon as I get a thaw. Surface or pile composting still allows for surface flow of nutrient and biologicals (BOTH issues); I will dig a 4 foot hole and line it with chimney flue to eliminate surface contamination, and I will use the overflow from maintaining my sourdough culture (if you don't chuck some everytime, you end with a swimming pool full in half a year ) to add facultative anaerobes (Lactobacillus in this case) to aid digestion (not truly composting as I will have an oxygen deprived situation and composting denotes aerobes in most people's minds).

Paul's assertion about soil containing everyting it needs is absolutely correct; I am just adding a soil bacteria we happen to use for yogurt, sour cream, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchee, AND sourdough. Others will show up as well, but that shot of septic tank biology wouldn't hurt either. And I certainly second Marina's thought; what's better than doing it this way?

The toxoplasmosis question around cats feces is certainly in need of more review, and Marina I expect you will ruin into the dearth of solid info and the mass of speculation I did. There is even conjecture this syndrome is more prevalent than we think, and may be responsible for crazy cat lady syndrome, where they just can't get enough cats. Rats infected are shown to actually seek out the company of cats, thus assuring the disease a back and forth vector. Crafty...

The other unknown here is prionic contamination, a syndrome just starting to get a look, but again far more prevalent than first thought. Any meat eating animal (or herbivores fed meat products; BSE or mad cow is a prionic disease) will excrete prions as part of defecation; in background levels they tend to be harmless (but this still needs study). The high concentrations found in sewer sludge biosolids have brought it into question (hundreds of times background levels), and certain new developments of late (a Yale study has shown prionic links to Alzheimer's, and a mysterious disease affecting fishermen on the Neuse River in NC was finally linked to prionic transfer from pig wastes, to fish slime, to dermal contact in humans, although the exact mechanisms are still not clear...prions are not destroyed by thermophilic temps and even oven heating does not destroy them...

So in ground anaerobic methods seems clearly preferable to everything else I've seen so far, although I remain open to suggestion...

Great thread!

HG

My understanding is that pathogens will not pass the fruit stem barrier.

And .... I need to qualify that further:  this is based on what we know today, and, frankly, I think worry about pathogens is a healthy thing. 

Therefore, if I were attempting to put dog poop somewhere, or even composted dog poop, I would choose to put it on willows, cottonwoods and poplars in the spring time.  I might put it on other non-edible trees or shrubs if these species were not available. 

I would not put this sort of thing on, or near, edibles. 

In time, it could be shown that I was being too much of a nervous nelly.

On the flip side, sometimes we have a user here that goes by "mt.goat" and I know that he digs a shallow hole, poops in it and plants root crops that he eats a few months later.  He has done this for several years.  I think maybe seven years.  I think he is playing russian roulette with a revolver that holds 10,000 bullets.  He probably thinks I'm an ignorant ninny.  I'm okay with that.

Hot composting is the best way to kill unwanted pathogens and parasites!!  The round worms of so much comment in this thread actually want soil contact for part of their life cycle so good hot composting of the manure is the best way to kill the eggs (sewage threatment plants don't even kill the eggs unless they cook the solids and eggs still get through in the liquid stream.)

Anyway, burying the pet waste is better than leaving lots of it to rot in the yard for people to step in and track into the house, but I would still say composting is better.

As to the nasty parasites that can be transmitted from cats.  Now they are not going to find their way up into the fruit growing in the tree.  People catch them from direct fecal contact.  This is why pregnant women are usually supposed to be exempt from cleaning cat littler boxes.  And all the "no-no's" about not using human or pet manure in compost is because the "average" person can't be expected to make properly hot compost.  If you have really good hot compost and you let it age plenty long (like a year after adding any new materials) then you can compost pet manure just as safely as you can compost human manure and it is the safest way to "dispose" of said manures and turn them into something useful.  If you are gonna use that compost for your veggie garden or only under your fruit trees and ornamentals is gonna be up to you.

About the only things I'm likely to avoid growing in the humanure compost are gonna be root crops that we tend to eat raw and only minimally washed (carrots) and perhaps lettuce.

I highly recommend reading the Humanure Handbook.
http://humanurehandbook.com/index.html

My understanding is that poo doesn't remain poo for very long once it's in contact on all sides with the soil.  Lots of hungry things turning it into non pathogenic stuff.  And while Mt. goat is doing something I would not do, the fact that he's been doing it for years without a problem says that maybe there are even more bullets that he's playing with.  In the millions, possibly. 

The lady who first introduced me and my Philadelphian friends to humanure said that it's safest to compost your own poo to grow your own food, because you generally know the state of your own health.  And, you're going to care if your food is safe, which leads to practicing careful and safe composting methods.  She had a really tidy two bin system that composted all of the waste in her household.  She lives in a suburb somewhere in TX and says that her neighbors have no idea that her edible landscaping is almost entirely nourished with her poo.  They'd throw a fit if they ever smelled anything "off" and that's good incentive for her to keep her system actively decomposing. 

She said it takes about six months to fill up one bin, at which point she removes the compost from the second bin and allows it to finish somewhere else, and flips the first bin into the second.  Then she sticks a thermometer in there and makes sure the whole things stays at around 160 degrees F for three days.  Then it sits for another six months while she fills up the first bin.  Her compost is flipped twice and allowed to rest for a full year and a half before use in the garden.  That whole method seems extremely reasonable and safe to me.  I'd like to switch our poo only compost method to something more along these all encompassing lines.  But I guess soon we won't have a lot of food scraps due to the pigs. 

Ah but with pigs, you can add their manure to the compost!!!

Our bins are about 5 foot cubed.  We have two.  We found that if we don't add all yard waste to the pile, use only what we need as cover material, the bins fill up in about six months but we can continue adding to them for the full year since the pile shrinks down so much between each addition that we just keep adding to it for the year.  Then we leave it cure for a full year before using it around the yard and gardens.  Since we live where we do, we decided it would be easiest to switch piles at New Years to help keep track of when one bin was put to rest and when to start the new bin (or just emptied bin.)

I agree that doing humanure compost is best done personally.  If collecting humanure publicly, one would need to ensure that every speck of material got to 160 F for the complete 3 days by using some sort of contained heating system before selling the compost.  On the personal side, our neighbors have no idea that we refuse to poop in nice clean bowls of drinking water to then let the nutrients leach back into the drinking water.  As to pet waste, we use the pine or wheat kitty litter and when scooping the litter, it goes into the buckets to be dumped into the compost.

I do agree the common American practice of taking perfectly good water to move humanure around is retrograde stupid. There have to be better options.

But I remain concerned about prionic concentrations (only an issue for us omnivores, tis true) and the emerging data on it's health links. I do think we could handle our own issues given proper training and tools, but the problem becomes one not of correct practice, but incorrect practice. Sooner or later somebody does it wrong and the health implications at that point are often communal and not singular in nature. While I live in a very rural area (for Connecticut) I'm still a townie and it's a little tight around here for all of us to be digging for dookie. Night soil is a recognized fertilizer most places on the planet, but I cannot unlearn enough to be good with making my own taters from scratch like MG. Just not sure how hungry I would have to be and hope to never be there...

S

The toxoplasmosis question around cats feces is certainly in need of more review, and Marina I expect you will ruin into the dearth of solid info and the mass of speculation I did. There is even conjecture this syndrome is more prevalent than we think, and may be responsible for crazy cat lady syndrome, where they just can't get enough cats.

Wow.  Because of this thread, my eyes are opened to the ways that parasites change the behavior of their hosts to further their cause.  Amazing.  And only slightly frightening.  I still have a lot of faith in the power of my immune system, and the millions of other non-pathogenic organisms competing for space and nutrients out there in the dirt/compost. 

I know about the cat feces danger because I had a friend who knew a completely crazy woman who claimed it was toxoplasmosis (thank you Scott for reminding me of the official name) that caused her neurosis.  But she was also a gulf war vet.....From my understanding toxoplasmosis is extremely rare, especially if you live with less than 20 cats. 

We are just starting to recognize some "low level" pathogens in relation to fecal contamination; there is research currently ongoing regarding prion concentration and Alzheimer's that shows certain links. What we do not know will always outpace what we do. But I do not find Marina's faith entirely misplaced; even science recognizes the natural state of Nature is stability...

The pathogen "pilot" phenomena is truly amazing. Planet Earth showed a fungus that attacks ants, takes over their nerve system, has the ant climb towards the light and spores when the ant can climb no higher (thus achieving the widest possible dispersion area). Anyone who says there is no inate intelligence to natural design and evolution is not paying attention. Anyone needing to attribute it to a power higher than Nature is missing the point...

S

This article is interesting.  As are the comments, which have quite a range of opinions.

The thing that worries me, with large scale processing and re-use of human "bio-solids" as they like to call poo, is that the processed sewage is usually placed in areas that are devoid of healthy amounts of bacterial and fungal life.  How much biological activity can there be in an abandoned gravel quarry?  Seems like personalized composting by well educated citizens might be more effective and safer.  It's just difficult to deal with literally tons of s***, period.  I guess that would require the general public getting over poo phobia.  Sigh.

I can't help but think that scary stuff might be overly concentrated in modern sewage particularly.  We aren't very healthy as a nation.  Lord knows what all the various pharmie residues floating around in everyone's urine do to microbial life later on down the chain.  Lots of stuff that we haven't even thought to study yet. 

I will use the overflow from maintaining my sourdough culture ....to add facultative anaerobes (Lactobacillus in this case) to aid digestion

So you just poor the water off the top into your poo compost situation?  I like this idear.  Does it need to be anaerobic digestion to work? 

marina phillips wrote:Seems like personalized composting by well educated citizens might be more effective and safer.  It's just difficult to deal with literally tons of s***, period.  I guess that would require the general public getting over poo phobia.  Sigh.

I can't help but think that scary stuff might be overly concentrated in modern sewage particularly.  We aren't very healthy as a nation.  Lord knows what all the various pharmie residues floating around in everyone's urine do to microbial life later on down the chain.  Lots of stuff that we haven't even thought to study yet. 

Yep, private compost (managed well of course) is definitely more effective and safer than what gets dumped down drains and toilets to go to sewage treatment.  (not much stopping most people from dumping all sorts of nasty stuff down drains.)

Anaerobic digestion with lactobacillus is a continuation of what we were doing in our guts. Makes a certain sense to me to just sustain the process already underway...

S

Scott Reil wrote:
retrograde stupid.

Love it!

How about Todd's Living Machine?  Anyone have any experience with that?  http://toddecological.com/
That is what I would like to see but up here you need to put it in a greenhouse to keep it working through the winter.  And perhaps a bit of overkill just for pet poo.

I followed the link.  I didn't see anything about a living machine.

There is a tab that is named Eco-machine.  John Todd is credited for developing the Living Machine but that is now a trademarked name of the Dharma Group, LC in Virginia.  Sorry if my information was confusing.  ops:

Two points:

I've read that you can use upwards of 90% of your sourdough culture each time you bake, and what sticks to the container is plenty to inoculate the fresh flour paste. I do throw out a fair amount of hooch, and occasionally some starter, but you don't have to throw out much, especially if flour becomes scarce.

Second, I think composting eliminates prions, not by pasteurization, but by digestion. Protease enzymes work fine against prions. Much of the virus & spore elimination in a compost pile is also accomplished by chemical means, rather than thermal ones: otherwise, resting for a year wouldn't make sense.

Joel Hollingsworth wrote:

Second, I think composting eliminates prions, not by pasteurization, but by digestion. Protease enzymes work fine against prions. Much of the virus & spore elimination in a compost pile is also accomplished by chemical means, rather than thermal ones: otherwise, resting for a year wouldn't make sense.

I agree there since the thermal part of good hot composting usually only lasts a short time generally to the newest additions to the pile.  The stuff that has already undergone the thermal phase spends most of it's time being digested by many different organizims from bacteria to fungi to bugs and worms while enzymes of all sorts are being used by many of these to work the process.

I expect a big part of why composting works well is that it is the very best of diversity while a more sterile environment actually tends to allow pathogens to get out of control since they have no competition.

I have had this conversation so many times and there is always some veternarian who pipes up and says there is no reason why dog poop cannot be used in compost piles as long as its composted and the same is true of human poop.

Personally I don't like the idea -- but then where else is it to go?

I think the problem of interspecies contamination has more to do with the medications that dogs need to be on to be healthy and do you want those medications in your food?

wombat wrote:
I think the problem of interspecies contamination has more to do with the medications that dogs need to be on to be healthy and do you want those medications in your food?

I think for composting both dog poop and people poop - I wouldn't use the compost on food.  I would put it on conifer trees, poplar or cottonwood.

I don't throw out much of my dough either Joel; as a practicing swamp Yankee it just doesn't come naturally. But neither does paying for septic tank treatment, so when the time comes I will just make more starter (the current batch is HUMMING as things warm up).

On the second point, if biotic enzymes broke down prions, why do we get higher concentrations bio-solids? Any number of bacteria have had a crack at it, albeit anaerobically so the fungal side would be non-existent. Considering Paul Stamets work, perhaps there is our answer. But I do not think we can rule out prionic concentration in omnivore or carnivore feces even after composting, unti;l; somebody does the science...

So I'm with Paul. Precautionary Principle. Better safe than sorry...

S

I don't think all cat obsession has roots in toxoplasmosis. I understand that the DSM classifies it along with other hoarding behaviors. Those behaviors run in my family (one great aunt was very nearly a danger to herself), and I have tended toward that kind of think in a mild and controllable way since adulthood, despite minimal exposure to cats in childhood & young adulthood. There was once even a cat lady who went in for big cats (New Yorker).

Scott Reil wrote:On the second point, if biotic enzymes broke down prions, why do we get higher concentrations bio-solids?

I didn't know about that one! It's a surprising result, and also I wouldn't argue with abundant caution. Here's what I knew before your comment: the difference between prions and normal proteins is only a matter of configuration. If somehow this configuration were immune to all enzymatic attack, and just happened to also, by chance, have the property of altering the folding of similar proteins in its host, that would be an already-unlikely event compounded with an amazing coincidence.

Combine that with what we know about mad cow, or cru curu, and throw in Yale's study last year linking prionic contaminants to Alzheimer's, and I think we are looking at a serious enough issue to warrant that caution...

S

I must get my dog wormed.
      It is seriouse but these things do have their real and not real sides and life is not safe as Jon Stewart always rightly points out. You can't just kill everyone so as to be safer.
       I don't suppose the parasites can get into fruit, we aren't taught that we should be carefull of the dog, parasite, fruit, cycle, we are told to be careful of the dog, parasite, eating dirty carrots or through children playing in the dust and licking their fingers cycle and doctors would have told us if parasites could get into fruit, we are taught that to play i the dust doges aave popped in can give you worms. nand to those who think chatter is a waste of time people who give a lto fo time to talking get to here of this sort of thing . somepeople seem to think socialising is just frivolouse.
 
  tape worm.
  i think this is the frightening one it can affect you in two different ways according to which bit of its life cycle affects you, it is the second i talk of that is the frightening one that means worms behind you eye or in your muscles and such horrors Susanne Munroe mentions . . the part we talked about as kids at school  the stage in hte worms life that is so dramatic, when it is a enormouse worm in the intestine eating all the food we eat and starving us  that apparently you could get rid of by starving it and then tempting it into the persons mouth by hanging a bit of meat in their mouth and cutting its head off, the creature of  in horror stories at school is easier to diagnos and so less mortal i suppose. .
 
part one
    I learnt at school that the tape worm works in a human pig chain, cycle. Humans with a tape worm in them pooped in the country a short while ago in the mediteranean and then as pigs lived wild they ate the poop with tape worm eggs in it, or the pigs were directly fed poop called sloops and the result is  a bit complicated the eggs at some point get out of the pigs gut and to other parts of its body such as the muscle other wise known as meat. where they develop into little worms that we eat when we eat pork, We eat the pig, undercooked and then the worm in the muscles of the pig  develops into a tape worm in our intestines that spouts out eggs in to our intestines that we leave on the ground when we poop, if we live were there are no toilettes.
  part two
  On the other hand  humans can be involved in the pig part of the cycle, eat the eggs and have them develope in their muscels when i was reading about the story mentioned in House the story of a  jewish man with a mysteriouse illness that attackes his mind  and House and his team take a long time to think that he mihgt be infected by worms because as a practicing jew the patient doesn't eat pig. THe patient has eaten  the eggs that come from the poop of a person with a tape worm whio  prepares the food in his house,  he had a house help who came from a country with tape worms and the egg developes in his muscle, maybe it could have developed in his eye.
     I suppose, as a cycle, if a human is attacked in this part of the parasites life cycle it will not perpetuate itself, the pig is not going to eat human meat in the normal course of things.
     All this means, don't poop in the pig house or where there are pigs, or feed pigs sloops in this way you break the cycle of the tape worm. 
    This is also usually learnt in bible studies becaause it is meant to be the reason that God said to the jews they weren't to eat pork.

     I am going to look up ring worm.
  In another program of "House" there is the girl who nearly dies from a reaction to "garrapatos" ticks in english i think and they abound now the world is getting hotter, so there is no safe world. rose macaskie.

  I just loked up hook worms in humans they only cause itchy patches on skin called plumbers somethign or other becuase plumbers used to get them when they mended pipes under houses where dogs use to defecate.
    In pets it the larvae can get through their skin and it does not stay just under the skin as it does in humans but gets into the lungs where it is coughed up and swallowed and then the parasites can develope in the intestine and they grow big and suck enough blood to kill the pets on occasions.
    The larvea can also get into the puppies in the womb of a pregnant dog who steps where they are to be found and into the puppise lung to be coughed up and swalloed when they are born and to develope in the puppies intestines.
  the larvea can also get inot the mothers dogs milk and so into the puppies and into their lungs to be coughed up and swallowed etc.
the cure.
Any good  parasite cure gets rid of them.
  They will get reinfected if they live and defectate in one spot and are returned to it.
  the larvea live in the soil for a few weeks . So send the pet  away for a few weeks if you can .

the syptoms are,-:      inapperent infection,    nonspecific diarrhea,    dark tarry diarrhea,      blood in diarrea ,      voliting, poor appetite  or no apetite ,        pale mucose membranes in the mouth , the dogs get anemia. General pallor. Anemia can be so sever as to kill them.  agri rose macasklie .

Okay, this is one thing I have done.

I use pine (not cedar) shavings in the cat boxes. One year I constructed a third compost bin about 100 ft from the existing ones. I dumped the cat box contents in this third bin, mixing in grass clippings from the lawn, which was much larger then. It took nearly 2 years for the shavings and poo to completely break down. I used this compost on the ornamentals out front, far away from the food plots. It worked just fine. But two years is a long time to wait for compost. The amount of space required to do this all the time is more than I have. Turning a compost pile full of cat poo is REALLY icky.
So I still use pine shavings because they are a by product of local lumbermills. But I don't compost this anymore. If I had a partner and weren't doing everything by myself I might have the energy to keep it up. But when it became clear that something needed to go it was not difficult at all to discontinue the great cat poo experiment.

paul wheaton wrote:
My understanding is that pathogens will not pass the fruit stem barrier.

And .... I need to qualify that further:  this is based on what we know today, and, frankly, I think worry about pathogens is a healthy thing. 

Therefore, if I were attempting to put dog poop somewhere, or even composted dog poop, I would choose to put it on willows, cottonwoods and poplars in the spring time.  I might put it on other non-edible trees or shrubs if these species were not available. 

I would not put this sort of thing on, or near, edibles. 

In time, it could be shown that I was being too much of a nervous nelly.

On the flip side, sometimes we have a user here that goes by "mt.goat" and I know that he digs a shallow hole, poops in it and plants root crops that he eats a few months later.  He has done this for several years.  I think maybe seven years.  I think he is playing russian roulette with a revolver that holds 10,000 bullets.   He probably thinks I'm an ignorant ninny.  I'm okay with that.

Well, that is a good idea to compost pet waste. A lot of farmers used animal manure as organic fertilizer.
A pet waste composter should be set up a good distance away from your other composting systems and vegetable gardens, and as far as possible from the nearest water body (at least a good 100 yards or more).

I'm all for composting pet waste but do you use the pet poop compost just on non-eatables? or can you use it in the veggie garden?

My gut feeling is that its a bad idea & I know others feel the same but dose anyone know for a fact?

I have heard that coarsely ground pumpkin seed given in pet food can help get rid of worms.

D

I have been making plans to make use of my golden's solid waste by vermicomposting.

From this thread, it seems one of the safest ways to turn the problem of dog waste into a solution is to compost it. check.

Some say to use the resulting worm poops on non food producing plants. However, some say it is safe to apply the compost to plants which you do not directly consume (Am I wording this right?). So plants that produce edible fruits/nuts/flowers are okay.
Can someone please chime on the latter?

My plan:
(please dont be shy with suggestions for improvement)

1)bury a conventional trash bin 2/3's into the ground
      -the bin will have a lot of holes up to ground level
      -every deposit of dog poopers will be preceded and followed by some carbon-y material (dried leaves and news print for me)

2)plant comfrey around the bin
      -thought of including other dynamic accumulators, i just dont know that many..

3)harvest comfrey for rest of yard
      -spread vermicompost back into bed of comfrey (as per  safest practice)

So, what do you all think?
Thank you

how will you get the castings out without it being mixed with poo?

Good point.

Maybe I can have multiple bins.
When one fills, leave it sealed for a year before taking out the worm poops?

whadayathink?

swamp donk wrote:
... before that we would pour it down ground hog holes!

Did it work?

Got me to thinking about the big pile of porcupine droppings under an old outbuilding.
They're very dry where they are. I could scoop them out into a pile exposed to the rain and mix in some other matter.
I wonder if they would be too acid for compost?

I would like to get opinions about what I plan to do:

Feed my dog poo to black soldier fly larvae, then feed the black soldier fly larvae to the goldfish in my aquaponics tank. 

Is there any way anything bad could find its way into my vegetable plants that are filtering the water of the fish tank?

Brian Gallimore wrote:
I would like to get opinions about what I plan to do:

Feed my dog poo to black soldier fly larvae, then feed the black soldier fly larvae to the goldfish in my aquaponics tank. 

Is there any way anything bad could find its way into my vegetable plants that are filtering the water of the fish tank?

Depends, are the plants the only thing filtering the water?

Mekka Pakanohida wrote:
Depends, are the plants the only thing filtering the water?

Yes, it is a simple/typical aquaponics system, closed loop.  The water in the fish tank gets circulated through a gravel-filled grow bed with plants growing in it.

Brian Gallimore wrote:
Yes, it is a simple/typical aquaponics system, closed loop.  The water in the fish tank gets circulated through a gravel-filled grow bed with plants growing in it.

Honestly, I know have over 20 years experience with such systems, and I see no problem at all. 

I was also thinking, instead of discussing the merits of composting it, which is what Gallimore did all be it with insects, that we should also discuss other possible methods of dealing with it in a more long term permaculture manner; Or would that be another topic all together?

I'm sitting outside the box here, lo0king in and around it for more answers. 

Slugs eat dog poop. I never saw any of my dog's poop until I started putting oak leaves in the yard to build the soil. Slugs don't like oak leaves. I bet that once processed through the slugs or worms, the pathogens would not be a problem. I don't know. What about parasite eggs? Don't know. 

here's a view on treating wastes - diversity

http://www.emissionizero.net/Principi_e_Strumenti_Zero_Emissioni_THE_5_KINGDOMS_OF_NATURE.html

Recycle waste through as many kingdoms (bacteria, animal, algae, plant, fungi) as possible





The Five Kingdoms of Nature
SYSTEMS DESIGN PRINCIPLES
   


Nature’s 1st Design Principle

No species eats its own waste
Whatever is waste for one
is food for another
belonging to another kingdom

If a species eats its own waste
it will degenerate


Nature’s 2nd Design Principle


Whatever is a toxin for a species,
is neutral or a nutrient
for at least one species
belonging to another kingdom

If you try to eliminate a toxin
within the same kingdom,
the system will degenerate



Nature’s 3rd Design Principle


Whenever there is a virus jeopardizing a species
it is harmless for species
in at least 3 other kingdoms

If you try to kill a virus
within the same kingdom,
the system will degenerate



Nature’s 4th Design Principle


The more diverse, the more local,
the more efficient, the more resilient

If non-native species
are introduced
the system will degenerate



Nature’s 5th Design Principle


Whenever species of all 5 Kingdoms interact, the system will integrate
and separate all matter at ambient temperature and pressure

If species from less than
five kingdoms interact,
the system degenerates
according to the
2nd law of thermodynamics

I use my dog's shit to deter deer from my vegetables..  I've put turds around the perimeter of my cultivated area and watched the deer through a scope.. They were 'spooked'. They did not like the foreign smell in their vincinty..Just one preventive method I know that I've seen work.. (and no they didn't spot me or smell me, I was inside).

Peace -

duane wrote:
here's a view on treating wastes - diversity

http://www.emissionizero.net/Principi_e_Strumenti_Zero_Emissioni_THE_5_KINGDOMS_OF_NATURE.html




The Five Kingdoms of Nature
SYSTEMS DESIGN PRINCIPLES
   


Nature’s 1st Design Principle

No species eats its own waste
Whatever is waste for one
is food for another
belonging to another kingdom

If a species eats its own waste
it will degenerate


Nature’s 2nd Design Principle


Whatever is a toxin for a species,
is neutral or a nutrient
for at least one species
belonging to another kingdom

If you try to eliminate a toxin
within the same kingdom,
the system will degenerate



Nature’s 3rd Design Principle


Whenever there is a virus jeopardizing a species
it is harmless for species
in at least 3 other kingdoms

If you try to kill a virus
within the same kingdom,
the system will degenerate



Nature’s 4th Design Principle


The more diverse, the more local,
the more efficient, the more resilient

If non-native species
are introduced
the system will degenerate



Nature’s 5th Design Principle


Whenever species of all 5 Kingdoms interact, the system will integrate
and separate all matter at ambient temperature and pressure

If species from less than
five kingdoms interact,
the system degenerates
according to the
2nd law of thermodynamics

It may be a principle,  but it does happen. My dog occasionally eats its shit, and wolves in the wild when they instinctually know they may go without food for a time will consume their feces.

Where are you reading this stuff?

the thread was about "composting pet waste", not "finding other uses for pet waste"

the posting was that in setting up a recycling system (composting) , one should apply these design  principles. In a healthy systen these principles apply.

lack of these are an indication of problems or a system under stress. (starving wolves)

incorporating as many kingdoms as possible eliminates the build-up of parasites and disease.
shortcircuiting this has lead to the problems of prions and wasting disease in animals. animal parts from one species (sheep) were recycled (fed) to another (cows). If the sheep parts had been composted properly (bacteria, fungi, worms) and applied to fields to grow grass that cows ate, there would be no problem

one could design a system to handle animal wastes by feeding it back to them but that would not be healthy. Rotational grazing works by mimicing Nature in eliminating the unintentional consumption of manure by concentrating the wastes in one area and not returning until it is broken down by the other kingdoms.


rabbits eat their "soft cud pellets' as part of their digestion process. this is not "waste", the hard pellets are waste.