Feeding meat to composting worms?

[captain.koons]

Anyone do this?

I've been farming worms for a couple years now, I always try reading on ways to feed a wider assortment of food. I hear from some that you can feed meat to worms and others you can't so it's rather inconclusive.

I currently feed my worms an assortment of eggshells, veggie scraps, mushroom compost, misc manure, different kinds of bedding (coir, news paper, cardboard, old clothing, grass clippings), and most recently human and animal hair. I'm thinking of buying a couple birds to use their dirty bedding as worm food also.

I plan to keep expanding my worm population hopefully indefinitely so new food sources are crucial.

 

[maryjohn]

I'm going to try bokashi pickled meat in small quantities in the next 2 months.

The fear is rats.

 

[OrganicMeds]

Meat's fine just dehydrate it 1st and then ground up real fine

 

[h.h.]

Do worms eat rat poop?

 

[captain.koons]

I must learn more about bokashi composting for my worms. It seems fairly simple but I farm worms because it doesn't stink, and I'm fairly certain bokashi waste stinks.

 

[captain.koons]

Meat's fine just dehydrate it 1st and then ground up real fine

Wouldn't it just rehydrate in the bin? I'm confused.

 

[maryjohn]

I must learn more about bokashi composting for my worms. It seems fairly simple but I farm worms because it doesn't stink, and I'm fairly certain bokashi waste stinks.

"stink" is subjective. I very much enjoy the smell of my bokashi, and the liquid that comes out. sort of a brewery smell.

 

[OrganicMeds]

Yep it does to a small degree but is easier for the worms to eat if it is fine & you try to get raw meat fine....... If it's not really small it will start to stink as it will be there for days

Hey the worms love all that wasted cannabis leaf also

 

[captain.koons]

I wonder what would be best bokashi composting meat or dehydrating and blending that stuff into a powder then directly feeding my worms? Hmm

 

[maryjohn]

I wonder what would be best bokashi composting meat or dehydrating and blending that stuff into a powder then directly feeding my worms? Hmm

both. throw the powder in your bokashi bin.

 

[captain.koons]

excellent, now I just need to figure out how to raise and dry my bokashi organisms

 

[maryjohn]

there's homemade versions or just get a bottle of em-1. smallest one you can. keep it going as a mother culture.

youtube videos for making the bran. I dried it in the attic worked well.

 

[roots]

Do worms eat rat poop?

worms will eat anything, but you do not want them eating rat poop, absolutely not! cat, dog, & rat poop (among many others) may contain harmful pathogens and/or parasites that can pass onto your compost, then to your crops, and maybe even you.

i would stay away from meats altogether because of pests and insects.

if you are looking to compost meats, look into hot composting. maybe if you get your compost to some good temperatures consistently (100+ fahr.) and you were maintaining your compost properly, then might it be do-able.

 

[maryjohn]

In the coming 2 months we will see some bokashi turkey slices fed to my worms. Maybe even a lobster carcass.

Talk about sequestering some nice nutes!

 

[ganja din]

Hey,

I would suggest against adding any type of meat, egg, fish or dairy to a vermiculture bin. It will almost certainly putrefy if raw or cooked. And if you add fermented meat I have huge doubts the vermiculture worms will touch it. They don't like meat at all.

And on the topic of fermenting meat, I have read some great journal articles. It seems using bokashi would be more effective than say a basting of LAB over a few hours. And I would not use EM, even though the PnSB would have some desegregation effect upon the meat. LAB is the best microbe for this in my experience and from all my reading. FWIW, I highly suggest people read up on "silage" and the process of "ensiling"; it's like bokashi be much better studied and described in English.

Here are some good citations:

1. Lactic acid bacteria of meat and meat products
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t602057q756p5155/

2. Lactic acid bacteria in meat fermentation
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119380377/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

3. Meat fermentations with immobilized lactic acid bacteria (about silage-bokashi)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k212k802h6843419/

GL

 

[Mr. Greengenes]

Dog poop, rat poop, people poop, meat, all as safe in the compost or worm bin as they are in the environment. You have to remember that much of the 'organic movement' in the early days was dominated by the bio dynamics/Rudolph Steiner crowd, who's agenda was as much spiritual as it was practical. Those ideas about not composting meat or (people) poop are still tossed around to this day. My grandmother put dog/rabbit/cat or whatever poop on the garden and meat in the compost when I was a little kiddie. I'm still doing the same and now I'm an extremely healthy fiddythree.

 

[ganja din]

Dog poop, rat poop, people poop, meat, all as safe in the compost or worm bin as they are in the environment.

You should NOT be giving dangrous advise out like that. The reason human crap is not allowed to be composted for use on food humans will eat is the risk of pathogens in the compost. It has been shown that with *proper* hot composting can kill the pathogens (eg. =>130F for =>5 days, according to US Composting Council, under the FDA, I'm pretty sure). But it's not an absolute, and playing Russian roulette has never been on my to-do list...

One can compost human crap but one must know what they are doing, and it's not pleasant.

And for that matter, it is highly suggested to compost herbivore manure, not carnivore manure. Once can compost carnivore manure but it can contain more pathogens and is less readily available.

However, meat should never be composted, it will putrefy. That is why the suggestion is to ferment meat and then burying it in soil as OM (Organic Matter). Please, don't just give willy-nilly advise that can get people ill...

You have to remember that much of the 'organic movement' in the early days was dominated by the bio dynamics/Rudolph Steiner crowd, who's agenda was as much spiritual as it was practical. Those ideas about not composting meat or (people) poop are still tossed around to this day.

They are not merely 'tossed' around, they are still very serious concerns. And meat HAS NEVER been suggested as a compost feedstock in all my experience. And FWIW, the biodynamics movement was separate from the composting movement, I believe the mushroom compost science started long before biodynamics.

My grandmother put dog/rabbit/cat or whatever poop on the garden and meat in the compost when I was a little kiddie. I'm still doing the same and now I'm an extremely healthy fiddythree.

Well shes got a thing or two to learn then. I will bet you she is not hot composting correctly, and that her piles C/N ratio is not at all correct, I assume its wayyyy to low.

Sorry to dog on you, but your advise is dangerous and shows a lack of understanding. No offense intended, I'm just begin honest.

 

[ganja din]

Anyone do this?

I've been farming worms for a couple years now, I always try reading on ways to feed a wider assortment of food. I hear from some that you can feed meat to worms and others you can't so it's rather inconclusive.

Don't do it, they are not meat eaters in that fashion. And while I'm on the topic, vermiculture worms don't 'eat' most food stuffs placed in the bin. They consume the food stuffs, but only to 'eat' the microbes, mostly bacteria, within and on the food stuffs.

Slightly field dried (ie. microbial processed) and slightly whetted horse manure might be the best vermiculture feed stock there is, IMO.

And FWIW, there is no such thing as "vermicompost", I know you didn't say there was but I figured I'd mention it anyway. There is "vermicast". And while on the composting title topic, there is no such thing as "bokashi compost" either.

HTH

 

[Microbeman]

You should NOT be giving dangrous advise out like that. The reason human crap is not allowed to be composted for use on food humans will eat is the risk of pathogens in the compost. It has been shown that with *proper* hot composting can kill the pathogens (eg. =>130F for =>5 days, according to US Composting Council, under the FDA, I'm pretty sure). But it's not an absolute, and playing Russian roulette has never been on my to-do list...

One can compost human crap but one must know what they are doing, and it's not pleasant.

And for that matter, it is highly suggested to compost herbivore manure, not carnivore manure. Once can compost carnivore manure but it can contain more pathogens and is less readily available.

However, meat should never be composted, it will putrefy. That is why the suggestion is to ferment meat and then burying it in soil as OM (Organic Matter). Please, don't just give willy-nilly advise that can get people ill...


They are not merely 'tossed' around, they are still very serious concerns. And meat HAS NEVER been suggested as a compost feedstock in all my experience. And FWIW, the biodynamics movement was separate from the composting movement, I believe the mushroom compost science started long before biodynamics.




Well shes got a thing or two to learn then. I will bet you she is not hot composting correctly, and that her piles C/N ratio is not at all correct, I assume its wayyyy to low.

Sorry to dog on you, but your advise is dangerous and shows a lack of understanding. No offense intended, I'm just begin honest.

Well Mr. (real name) Din that's a rather pompous angry thing to say. We here bin usin shit waay fore yu cum along. <GRIN>
[you'll need to read another thread I'm in to understand the joke]
BTW why do you say there is no such thing as 'vermicompost'? The phrase has been coined in several sources to indicate a substance from the worm bin or pile that has some particulate other than worm casts. If one is raising larger worms such as African Night crawlers, they produce larger sized poo and they prefer a drier environment so the castings are easy to harvest, as little roundish balls which fall through the screen. Red Wrigglers have very small poo and like a wet environment so it does not come through the commercial harvester exactly the same (too gooey), unless dried first. I harvest my worms out of the material using humane traps instead of subjecting them to a screen [my precious worms], then we just scoop out the pile with the front end loader [in the case of the barn]. This is what I call vermicompost. It generally sits for another 3+ months before it is used so there is some static composting which takes place. Actually we often set traps again in the spring in the scooped out pile to catch the babies that hatch from the capsules/cucoons. So for now I'll still use the term 'vermicompost' until I learn otherwise.

 

[ganja din]

Hey buddy,

Well Mr. (real name) Din that's a rather pompous angry thing to say. We here bin usin shit waay fore yu cum along. <GRIN>
[you'll need to read another thread I'm in to understand the joke]

Will do, I got your email, I'll read it next

BTW why do you say there is no such thing as 'vermicompost'?

For something to be 'compost' it has to go through the composting process (hot or cold), otherwise (to my understanding) it shouldn't be called compost. Steve Diver got yelled at big time on the USCC list-serve for calling bokashi fermented food stuffs "bokashi compost". You can probably find it if you use google to search the list-serve, or I can find my links I have. There was a pretty in depth discussion about why compost should only refer to hot or cold compost (active or static or air infused).

Worm castings are properly called "vermicast", other names are misnomers. Some of the big guns on the USCC list-serve also argue that only 'hot' compost should be called compost, and 'cold' compost should not be called compost (because it's just a pile of this and that without concern for C/N or C/P ratios, etc).

I for one think as long as the raw OM (feedstock, aka. 'input') is aerobically processed by microbes in a pile, then it can be called compost.

Same deal for bokashi "compost", but because it's anaerobic it's even more of a misnomer. I like the English term "silage" to refer to bokashi fermented food stuff (ie. by LAB).

The phrase has been coined in several sources to indicate a substance from the worm bin or pile that has some particulate other than worm casts. If one is raising larger worms such as African Night crawlers, they produce larger sized poo and they prefer a drier environment so the castings are easy to harvest, as little roundish balls which fall through the screen. Red Wrigglers have very small poo and like a wet environment so it does not come through the commercial harvester exactly the same (too gooey), unless dried first. I harvest my worms out of the material using humane traps instead of subjecting them to a screen [my precious worms],

Nice. I like to use the 'food chasing' technique for my lager worm bins. That is, once the food stuffs are (pretty much) used up, place some more food stuffs on one side of the bin, so most all worms go to it. Then I can harvest the vermicast from the side they left. That is how 'low tech', yet big vermicast operations do it. But they screen it afterward.

I agree the screen method isn't ideal in the least.

then we just scoop out the pile with the front end loader [in the case of the barn].

"front end loader"...awosome

This is what I call vermicompost. It generally sits for another 3+ months before it is used so there is some static composting which takes place. Actually we often set traps again in the spring in the scooped out pile to catch the babies that hatch from the capsules/cucoons. So for now I'll still use the term 'vermicompost' until I learn otherwise.

Cool. I'll know what you mean. But if you have time, or if you want I can send you some links, regarding why compost is called compost (pretty much what I stated a few paragraphs up)


All the best