Compost Question?

[sillysally]

We have a lot of waste from our 4 birds. They all have toys, which are usually made to be torn up or chewed, plus they drop bits of food and then there is of course their droppings, which fall into a newspaper lined pan (with colored ink, not just black and white).

Can this stuff be composted?

[fidgiegirl]

Conventional wisdom would be that backyard composters would not get hot enough to handle it. We have a commercial composting pickup site and we can't put pet wastes in there, either, but people do use chicken poo for fertilizer, so maybe bird wastes are different than dogs' or cats'. I am curious to see what some others think about that.

[iris lilies]

We have a lot of waste from our 4 birds. They all have toys, which are usually made to be torn up or chewed, plus they drop bits of food and then there is of course their droppings, which fall into a newspaper lined pan (with colored ink, not just black and white).

Can this stuff be composted?

Our rule is: we don't compost waste from meat eating animals.

Bird waste would be ok.

[RosieTR]

Even dog poo compost would be fine to use for fruit trees or ornamentals but not veggies. As for bird waste in veggie gardens, chicken poo is too "hot" and has to be composted, so probably the birds would be fine if dealt with that way. Their poo compost will likely have a lot of seeds though, unless you get it to the right temp. So it will depend on how picky you are and how you do your compost.

[redfox]

I worry about histoplasmosis. Here is an article about viruses birds carry: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/61646.php

[Gardenarian]

We use worm composting, and I think it would be safe once it had been through the worms. You can compost dog poop with worms (I don't, because of the mess and general ickiness - I bury my dog's waste in the yard.) That histoplasmosis is pretty scary.

[Gregg]

We've come full circle on this and now just toss veggie kitchen scraps, fall leaves and trimmings from the yard on the pile. Having a larger dog there is temptation to heat up the pile and compost droppings, but we just don't want to worry about it. Our lives are simpler with only flora in the compost and dog poop in the dump.

[razz]

Bird droppings are very high in nitrogen and would burn flora. I am not sure that worms could cope with such high nitrogen but I may be very easily wrong on that.