Can dog poop be vermicomposted? | Hacker News Reader

Can dog poop be vermicomposted?

redwormcomposting.com

35 pointsmooreds53 comments

I had this going well with worms in my compost but then had a mole make home under the compost. These cute little insectivores will eat all the worms.

A great way to deal with this is to use small sharp gravel, it bothers their paws. If you can imagine a layer about 2 inches thick of this gravel between the normal dirt and the compost, that's about what you want to aim for. We get voles as well, and this works great for all types of burrowers in a way that won't poison your pets and livestock.

This comes up quite frequently in the vermiculture forums. No one really has a definitive answer based on evidence (e.g. counts of pathogenic fecal coliforms) A middle of the road approach would be to run it through a cycle of hot composting.

You can pasteurize poop. Granted it would be a pretty inglorious process, but it's not unheard of in certain communities. In my experience it's typically horse excrement which has an entirely different composition, but I imagine that could be remediated without much additional effort. Coconut coir, sphagnum moss, grass clippings.

I can't imagine why the process would be ineffectual (other than emitting smell loud enough to be heard for miles), but I'm no microbiologist.

If you're composting it properly, it doesn't really have any smell at all, except dirt. It's when you don't move it around, and it starts to compost anaerobically that it starts to produce methane, and then you've got a pile of stink on your hands.

I believe methane itself doesn’t really have much of a smell. It’s things produced alongside the methane like ammonia and certain other nitrogen compounds, sulfur compounds, and carboxylic acids (particularly short chain fatty-acids like acetic acid and butyric acid).

You can use microwave device to sterilize it and test for harmful pathogens or total activity using respiration rate or total cfu count to confirm process

This is very different than cow or horse poop. Herbivore poop doesn’t really stink and in many places it’s just mixed with water and lies in an open bit to compost.

Worst part of my summer holidays as kid was picking pig poop for the yard farm. My father used to say pig poop is better than cattle though I doubt his reasoning is scientific.

> pig poop is better than cattle

I did read [0] that omnivores have higher microbial diversity in their excrement.

They were specifically referring to human vs ungulate shit, but I'd assume the same applies to pigs.

[0] Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, first chapter

I was under the impression that de-worming treatments (which any dog owner should be giving to their dog) made this kind of composting impossible. Being able to compost the paltry amount of waste my small dog produces is not worth the risk of him getting heartworm, ticks, or worse.

Of course, if there is a way to do this with a dog on a de-worming treatment, I'd be more than happy to give it a try.

The dewormer has a half life of about 24 hours, and is also exiting in a different form than it was administered.

Composting dog poop has been a nice way to avoid stinking up the trash bin.

Yes, if the dog is treated against heartworms. Not a good idea otherwise

I think you mean other types of worms.

Not, because treatment against heartworms is the standard, and will kill all other roundworms also

Please cite some sources for this. I highly doubt it treats all, like whip worm.

Ok, I will change my previous phrase then

"Yes, if the dog is treated against roundworms and other inner parasites. Not a good idea otherwise"

Heartworms are transmitted via mosquitoes, like malaria. Heartworms also very rarely establish themselves in humans, as they are not adapted to our circulatory system. Certain roundworms and hookworms, on the other hand are fecal-born and will cross-infect into humans.

What's all this "poop" crap? Is it US culture to use children's words for anything scatalogical, even between grown-ups? It's not a word I've ever heard an adult use other than when speaking to children.

It seems like a universal term in my experience.

In the US? I know many US people think their local culture is 'universal', and its corporations are trying to make it so, but have failed thus far. I've never heard a grown-up use 'poop' other than when talking to children. The UK equivalent of 'poop' would be 'poo', but even amongst the most curtain-twitchy suburbanites, I don't think its use between adults would be common.

Well it's the only word that is not a) "offensive" or crass (shit) or b) weirdly scientific (feces

I don't think this is a US thing really.

"Faeces" is very commonly used in medical conversations, which with an aging population in most of the developed world, represent a substantial proportion of human talk. "Crass" is a silly term to use for a fine aspect of our linguistic heritage (scatalogical words have a fascinating history) - and particularly daft if you're comparing it to the childish (and very American) 'poop' (which will no doubt itself eventually be subject to the euphemism treadmill and be thought of as 'crass' by the next wave of neo-Victorians). 'Shit' is by far the most commonly used word for this topic amongst grown up speakers of English that I have known.

Well sounds like you aren't hanging out with the classiest crowd then

Well if your definition of 'classy' excludes from worthwhile companionship thousands of people of the 4 nations I've lived in, classes ranging from street kids to multimillionaires, co-workers in shops and factories and corporate offices, ages from the primary school kids I've taught to the 90 year olds I've been friends with, then you're working from a sadly narrow social palette.

Perhaps your only experience of life is middle-class US sub/exburbia, but, truly, that group's local mores do not represent the universal cultural apex you think it does.

Nancy Pelosi used “Poo poo” so I don’t think the urge to choose a gentle tone is limited to children.

She's American. I was asking if this is an oddity of US culture. To my (non-US) ears it just sounds childish, like saying 'yummie' or calling your parents 'mummy/daddy'.

You would hate my country's language then. Diminutives are used in everyday conversation by adults, for no reason other than it sounds more fun.

What language? Sounding fun and inappropriately childish aren't necessarily the same thing - though language pragmatics are vastly complex and are easier to embody than really explain. Anyway I'd probably be more curious than judgemental about a language I'm not a native speaker of.

English is my own language, which is a different matter. The locution sounds inappropriately childish to me, so I was wondering if this was just the norm in the US (which often is oddly prim in some ways, wildly licentious in others, compared to some other English-speaking places).

… what do you call it in casual adult conversation?

shit, crap, faeces, roughly in that order of frequency, somewhat dependent on context.

I think it's because "shit" has acquired additional connotations, such as

1) An expression of dismay 2) Another word for "things"

"Poop" bypasses that and can therefore used to refer exclusively to feces in a nonmedical context.

Even if it could - I wouldn't want to eat vegetables that grew on dog poop. Funny how I feel grossed out by dog poop fertilizer but have no problem with cow dung, pig manure, etc.

Cows are herbivores, pigs mostly so. Dogs eat stuff that we would vomit on seeing. They also have some very bad parasites. I think it's perfectly natural to find dog poop more disgusting than cow manure.

my dog will eat actual vomit

caught mine sneaking off with a litter biscuit more than once

But parasites like heartworm aren't going to somehow make their way into a vegetable.

I don’t know, plenty of vegetable E. coli, Salmonella etc outbreaks are linked to organic fertilizers. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17927745/

Made from dog in poop?

Mostly cattle, chicken, pigs, horses etc simply due to feedlots etc, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a little dog poo got mixed in. Either incidentally or from the waste stream of commercial kennels.

> that we would vomit on seeing

Even their own vomit…

But where does the poo go?

if you want to subject yourself to a possible round worm parasite infection, sure, go ahead. Me,I’d rather not.

TLDR:

Hot compost first until it reaches 150 deg F, with lots of carbon to make sure the C/N ratio is good.

What if I vermicompost my own shit? Will the profit I make from the fertilizer pay for the sandwich? Infinite food supply? Deep thoughts; talk about Y combinator and infinite recursion.

Not, but you could cultivate stuff enough for other twenty sandwiches

Series A, here I come.

This exists. It's called humaneure

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Humanure_Handbook.h...

That was a thing in Japan: "In some cases, farmers established annual contracts with urban families. Called tsuke-tsubo, these agreements stipulated that a farmer could collect all of the household’s night soil for a year in exchange for a certain amount of rice as a down payment. So the residents would save their shimogoe for their particular farmer."

https://www.guernicamag.com/raising-a-stink/

Which was promoting this book: The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Health

> over-hyped media coverage of e-coli and salmonella outbreaks etc.

Really. It sounds like this person has never experienced bad food poisoning, it's quite unpleasant.

I assume they meant the probability is relatively low and not the severity. You can die from e-coli.

And if you don't, there's a chance you wish you did.

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