Using actual blood?

We are going to be butchering out a few animals, and I'm thinking about using blood in place of blood meal. Can this be done?

To my knowledge, blood and blood meal is the same, just dehydrated for the meal.  
Blood should work just fine for an amendment, but I'd wait until someone who has used it answers.

You can make blood sausage etc.

I use blood from animals I butcher in the compost or directly in the garden.  It's a great addition to soil.  A couple years ago I spilled some blood on the lawn: for the rest of the summer you could see a small patch of grass that was thicker and healthier than the surrounding lawn.

If it's fresh, you can dilute it with water and then apply it to your garden soil.  You can add it to your compost pile if there's too much to use on the garden or if it's out of season.  I suppose you could dry it, but that might be more work than it's worth.  Depends on how much blood you're dealing with and how much area you have that could use the nutrients.  

I can't see a downside, except if there are wild critters in your area that might be attracted by the smell of blood.  Raccoons, skunks, opossums, bears, foxes, cats, coyotes, vampires, werewolves.  Probably not those last two, but maybe some of the others.  

heather Long wrote:We are going to be butchering out a few animals, and I'm thinking about using blood in place of blood meal. Can this be done?

The trick to using blood as an amendment is to not over do it, as Craig brought up, you can dilute it and you can use it in the gardens, around trees and in the compost heap.

Soil that is saturated with blood (as in soaked in deep) will not be a good thing, you want to treat this just like you would a compost tea.

Redhawk

Thinned out it works. I butchered some chickens once and ended up spattering blood on some nearby plants and the fresh stuff burned the leaves.