Having spent a decent number of years in places where bilharzia (worms that enter the skin, grow, and then finally leave, picked up by wading in or drinking contaminated water), Onchocerciasis (aka 'River Blindness', from fly bites), Falciparum malaria from mosquito bites), those little worms that dig under your toenails (forget the name) , 'bot' flies, the ones where the eggs stay on wet laundry, so you have to iron everything or else you have a worm larvae burrowing and growing along the bikini line, then Trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness, from the tsetse fly; they sure love it when you go in the shade). I honestly wouldn't worry about domestic poop from your domestic dog, I mean unless you just let him devour stray, stumbling and obviously sick rodents and 3 week old road kill for his main source of nutrition. Where I live now, I have about a half cubic yard (bit of poetic license) of raccoon poop, in the summer, all over the place. Its disgusting. Like owning 34 German Shepherds on laxitives. This stuff I am pretty wary of, and depending on location, I either take a shovel and toss it over the fence into the pasture beyond, or bury it in-situ. I have become allergic to furry pets, so I can't keep dogs anymore. That limitation does not stop me from offering advice (obviously).

Maybe this will help with the chicken poop. It is a summary of how to use Lacto bacilli to get the chicken poop deomposing in the chicken house, help eliminate some odor, and help your chickens' health. This is summarized from the Gil Carandong paper on the link above, with an alteration. 1. Get or make some plain yogurt--doesn't matter whether it is fat free or full fat or inbetween. Make sure it has live cultures. (Dannon and Stoneyfield do). NO flavors. (This is the alternative to gathering LB from the air..) 2. Put a sieve over a bowl and line the sieve with a coffee filter. 3. Pour yogurt into sieve and let the whey drain out. Depending on how long you let it drain, you will end up with more whey/stiffer "yo-cheese" product (which you can eat or feed to chickens) or less whey/firmer yogurt product that resembles Greek yogurt. Eat it yourself of feed to the chickens (and goats) if you don't like yogurt. (If you use a quart of yogurt and let it drain a couple of days in the fridge you will end up with close to 2 cups of whey.) 2. Two options with the whey. Store the pure whey in the fridge or mix 1:1 with unsulphured molasses to keep at room temp without it going anerobic. 3. If using pure whey, mix 1.2t per 2 gallons unchlorinated water (like in a typical 2 gal pump sprayer). If using the molasses/whey mix, mix 2.4 (2.5 for ease) in two gal sprayer. Spray the chicken house floor...how often? I would do as much as possible at first to really get the LB bacteria working in there. You can also use this same mixture for the chickens' water. It will be like natural antibiotic, good for their digestion according to the paper. It is supposed to be particularly effective against Salmonella and E coli. Refer back to that Janong article to look how they are HANDLING the chicken litter from the house. They also use it in piggerys to eliminate odor. As for the pile of straw... a. Perhaps you can screen it off with some split bamboo fencing (not too pricey) or another alternative...free wooden pallets? http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/sawyer69.html or, if you need taller, this one: http://summerville-novascotia.com/PalletWoodShed/ But, if you add the right stuff to the straw pile (as mentioned above) you will have some incredible compost...and the straw pile will continually be shrinking.. Thank you Luckygal and RJ over on the other thread for coming up with the "one step" method of dealing with the LB... Here is a link that might be useful: split bamboo fence

I always thought it was gross, and had no interest in doing it, although I have regular compost piles outside. Then I decided to do it so I'd have some good quality stuff for my roses. I really enjoy it! It's weird, but you start getting fond of those little wormies. :-) I have 4 vermicompost bins now, and encourage others to try this as well. It's not only excellent for your plants, but it's a great way to dispose of your food waste and junk mail without contributing to landfill waste. If you decide to start doing it, this is a good website to go to for help: Deanna Here is a link that might be useful: Vermicomposting Forum

gardenweed_z6a: Yeah tomato plants love worm castings! I used them last year. I had no trouble with the blight I heard so much about. Of course I raise my own seedlings.. they are mighty with the worm casts! :) Nested 5 gallon buckets are super easy to use as worm bins. I forgot to put the lid on for a couple days on them and no worms tried to escape. They don't like light, so they dig down. No worries on that! I have not tried setting the buckets to meet so the worms crawl up, but that's a great idea if we can figure out a way to allow drainage and contact to the bucket above. Maybe a tall dual open-sided cake pan to create an inner worm compound and allow air space around the side of the bucket for so the center of the bucket will be more like a core of worm composts and the worms work their way up to the top into the top bucket. Maybe a 3 bucket setup is what we need so the bottom-most bucket is the be-all-end-all to collect the drippings. Now I am really interested in trying this. It's a bit of a chore to separate the worms from the casts, so if we can figure out how to do this same thing "on the cheap" (it's already cheap if you get free 5 gallon buckets) this will be even better. I recently emptied one of my bucket bins. Here's some photos: From 022810 One bucket after 1 year of constant feeding of primarily banana peels yielded 14 cups of casts! I have not harvested from the other bucket bin, but it is easily another 14 cups of castings! From 022810