I have no idea about dog food, but how about used coffee grounds as a rich nitrogen source?

Starbucks is one place to get them, but there are lots of convenience stores etc. who sell massive amounts of coffee.

PJ

yeah, i live in the boondocks, nunnathem thar fancy coffee shops round these here parts.....

You know I was thinking the same thing. That is using dog food in my compost pile.

Here's what I figure, I figure it's high in nitrogen because of all the animal meal in there. Remember Protein = Nitrogen.

Well, dog food has some expense. You can buy bagged manure for maybe the same price. But for a source of free, high quality nitrogen I would suggest...

(!!! WARNING: SENSITIVE TYPES SHOULD MOVE ON TO THE NEXT THREAD!!!)

...that you discretely pee on you compost pile. Regularly. No joke. Check the web for info on the percentage of N. No need for fancy coffee shops. Put a pot of Maxwell House on to brew, drink it down, then head on out to the compost pile.

Wayne

Wayne,

I've been taking a wiz in my pile and my current pile is stable manure, but the reason I'm thinking dog food is because of the other things it will have like iron.

BTW, how does steak sound? Tomorrow, I'm going to throw in a T-bone I left in the fridge to long. I hope it composts quickly because I don't want any stink or animals coming around.

I've never bought dog food for the purpose of adding it to the compost, but I have added dog food in the past (I thought the food was stale, but the dog was uncharacteristically not hungry). It helped heat the pile and there was no visible trace a few weeks later.

I've also added steaks when the freezer went out for a while. I made sure the compost was really cooking first (at least 135 F), added the steaks and made sure they were as close to the center as possible.

I never saw anything that resembled a steak when I turned the compost or when I used it.

The steaks I tossed in were boneless. I tossed them in whole and frozen (as hot as the compost was, they thawed quickly). Bones would take much longer to break down.

There are other, better, cheaper materials that can be added to compost for a Nitrogen source than dog food. Blood meal, bat guano, even commercial compost is available at lower cost.

If you just have some dog food that your dog does not want, then no problem. Even a 50 pound bag of it will not cause a problem. Most dog food has a high grain content anyway.

There is one thing you want to watch out for - hungry animals. I'll bet that a rat or a raccoon has no problems with that food even if it does not appeal to Fido. So bury it as deep in the pile as you can.

But not all dogs are that picky. I had a dog who ate anything. If you have a friend or neighbor who has a dog, they might appreciate it.

Karen

If the dog food is good aqnd not moldy, damaged or otherwise unusable and you have it on hand may I suggest donating it to the local animal shelter?

Sure it wll compost, but good chow is good chow.

Buy a 40lb bag of Milorganite from HD or Lowes as it is an organic fertilizer and will help heat your pile up nicely and is high in Iron.

bloodmeal is like 5 or 6 bucks @ lowes.

you can go to the dollar store and get American Value (super crappy) dog food in a 4 or 5 lb bag for like 1.50!

good thing is...once i get my garden going...after this year, hopefully, i'll have scraps from my own crops to fuel the pile.

I added food that my picky canine wouldn't finish to my compost pile and it attracted rats (and it was buried pretty well, not left on top). Of course I lived near the bay but still, don't think I will be doing that again. We had to exterminate.

cheap dog food is mostly corn with soy to boost protein. I had a sourece for a while of dog food which was damaged and couldnt be sold. I fed it to the hogs and THEN put it in the gardens. That cheap stuff shouldnt be fed to dogs anyways.

that's what im sayin...

and i don't think i'd use dog food as a staple in my compost, but just something to keep it hot when greens are scarce.

by they way, how often would you refer to when peeing in your compost pile? 2x a day?

I wiz in mine when I don't see anyone around and I'm around it. Basically, I do it when it's convenient. No way am I going to go out of my way to pee outside.

If you shop at the big box stores for garden supplies you will pay top dollar for any of it. The local garden shops are always much less expensive than the major chains.

Pee in a bucket and toss it at your convenience, as long as the pile can handle the moisture. Flushing pee down the toilet with drinking-quality water will soon seem a wasteful and even inexcusable habit.

I see nothing wrong with burying leftover crummy old dog food in the compost, especially where you live in a remote area like we do. (I wouldn't buy it for that purpose...) Compared to motor oil and sewage sludge it would be perfectly pile-friendly.

This is a fascinating conversation to witness! Since I live in an urban area, all I've got is a dumb ole' tumbler. I've got compost pile envy! :)
I've got to ask though, everything I read says you shouldn't put meat or cheese in a compost pile, and here you guys are tossing in whole steaks! What's the word on that? no harm putting meat scraps in?

A friend works at a slaughter house and grows a market garden. he uses lots of meat which cannot be used for human consumption due to several reasons, in his composting. One pile consisted of nearly 500 lbs of hamburger. He is convinced that nothing could be better for his 25 varieties of tomatoes and claims to have very little problem with pests in his piles. I have seen entire large animals(cattle & horses) composted, its the law, burying is illegal. They are totally composted in very short time except for the skull and a few other large bones. The soil is black and works good in the garden/field, most of these resources are too difficult to access for regular use. Usually in a back corner of the farm or woods area.

So, when you say 500 pounds of hamburger, what else does he put in that pile? fascinating that he has no problem with pests.

threeorangeboys,

There's nothing terribly wrong with putting meat into a compost pile as long as the pile is a hot pile.

Now if you have raccoons or other animals that like meat, you might have a mess, but meat itself ... Well, I add it.

As for dairy, I've never added it because I never seem to have any waste. Now I do, at times, end up with some sour milk, but instead of the compost pile, I just dump it in my garden area or a flower bed. I figure it's got loads of calcium so why not??

BTW, I've been known to throw dog food in my yard, away from the house. I do this because I figure it's food for the soil food web. Shoot, when no one's home (My better half gets mad at me for not using the trash can or the garbage disposal) I've been known to dump left over soup or whatever into the lawn. A couple weeks ago, she noticed the used tea bag I had been throwing in the yard. I got hell for it, but instead of picking them up, I just put my foot on them and ground them into the yard. The white bags got stained so she hadn't noticed them. :)

How much fat you can add to your compost pile depends on many things, but mostly how active the bacteria in your compost pile are. The more active those bacteria are the hotter the pile will be the more fat, as long as that fat does not exceed 1 percent of the total volume of the pile, you can add. People that tell you they added 500 pounds of ground meat to their compost pile with no detriment most likely do not really know what they are doing.

as long as that fat does not exceed 1 percent of the total volume of the pile

Supporting documentation/link?

Lloyd

Crabjoe, that is too funny. I get in trouble all the time for putting things out in the garden: coffee grounds, tea bags, mussel shells. for the most part though, since we are in an urban area, I've got to be careful cuz I bet we'd have rats quicker than I can say.

I dont think for the most part, my pile is very hot. How do I increase the bacterial activity in my pile? I know my tumbler should be turned more often than I do it. If I did that more regularly, would that help?

How do I increase the bacterial activity in my pile?

If want to give the bacteria a quick boost, throw some sugar into you tumbler. :)

Just be careful because it acts the same way on them as it does on us.

Really? How fascinating! I'll try it for sure.

or you could pour a soda in there right?

my wife is bad for openin one, drinkn about a quarter of it, then putting it back in the fridge........

would this be a good thing to do if youneed to get your pile back to cooking after freezing temps?

Folks,

You really want your pile to have the right ingredients, so don't think of sugar as a cure all.

Sugar, soda or similar is just energy, and it's a quick high. Basically it's good to get your bacteria going, but unless you've got the right ingredients in your pile, it's not a fix.

As far as meats and fats go I add them in small amounts.
Leftover dog food that my dogs don't touch(they eat fresh chicken usually) gets put into the hot part of the pile, Turkey Carcass..a favorite of mine to add.
I added red about 2 dozen steaks when the breaker to my deep freeze tripped and we didn't know about it for a few days... It composted fine, but I no longer will touch red meat for my own consumption. (Blah..Nasty)
Fish carcasses after a fishing trip, Shrimp and crab shells after a crab boil, Dead birds end up in the pile.

To be sure at any one time these animal products are added to an active pile and make up a small volume of the pile. They are well covered with brown materials to absorb the odors and prevent attracting any varmints.. I have never had an issue with them. My pile is based off of Leaves, Hay, Starbucks UCG's and our kitchen cuttings from our high volume plant based diet.
The high value compost I make is used primarily for my food crops. I use commercial compost to make up the volume for the ornamentals. I know it is ready to use when I discover macro organisms such as earthworms or soldier fly larva in the compost.

Oh Yeah, I use lots of my own urine.

About adding soda*, keep in mind how wet the compost is first - too much moisture will cool the pile down too. Same with urine.

*or pop as it's known in most of Canada, otherwise we might confuse it with baking soda

Not putting meat, fat, oils in the pile is Composting 101. But here on the SCM forum lots of people are up to Graduate Level Composting. I've learned more from them than from any literature, website, etc. If you do it right you can compost just about any organic matter.

some asked what the dude put with the 500#s of burger, I just talked to him. He had recently cleaned out the broken bales of a haymow in a neighbors barn, about 50 bales worth so he put the meat with the hay. He said he did have some varmint problems but not serious, a couple possums which added to the compost, and 1 of his dogs which he would liked to have added to the pile.

lol......hmmm, that's twisted, i'm sure theres a serial murderer/composter out there somewhere, lol

lets say that one of my piles has been pretty soaked for a while now, it doesn't stink yet or anything but i think its too wet where i couldn't cover it....would continuous rain rinse nutritional value from the compost?

I like to wait for my "dog" food processors, two Brittany Spaniels to process my dog food before adding it to the pile. Their processed dog food heats the pile up nicely and when with the right amount of plant material as a cover has no smell or ordor and literally just disappears in the compost pile.

so you put dog crap in compost?
i always read that that was a big no no?

* Posted by west9491 6 (My Page) on
Mon, Feb 25, 08 at 22:27

so you put dog crap in compost?
i always read that that was a big no no?

It might be a no no for the average person, but if you get your pile nice an hot, it's not an issue.

Personally, I don't think it's an issue even for the average person if they're just using the finished product on non-edible plants. I mean really, how often do you hear about someone getting sick from dog doo? And you know, dog doo is everywhere. If you own a dog, it's in your yard. Even if you pick up after your dog, do can't pick up everything.

You know, I'd really like to see the numbers. I'd like to know how many fall ill from using compost that had dog/cat doo in it. Shoot, many 3rd world countries still use human waste without composting it 1st.

Yes, there's always a chance, but for all I know, one might have a better chance of hitting the lottery then getting sick from contact with composted dog poo.

Someone, please point me to a reliable source that shows the numbers.

Thanks...

I keep my dogs inside most of the time and they are taken to the vet regularly. My wife prepares their food with more love than mine! They are kept clean and don't have any diseases, so my compostwith dog doo added to it every other day has never been a problem in over 10 years composting it. I do hot compost it and it disappears very quickly amongst all the greens and browns I add to the pile over the dog doo. I have used the compost on tomatoes, herbs and melons with zero problems in addition to my beds with palms and bananas and other cold hardy tropicals.

Also, as you would imagine, turning the compost pile and adding lots of plant material or "greens" and "browns" is a requirement.

i have a question on this dog food thing. so i go out and dumpster dive and i fount an un open bag of blue buffalo dog food and im using a light green tub for my compost. i just started i have magots. should i put worms in it ?

No, do not add worms.

If you have maggots, you have flies so your pile is not right.

Did you mix in anything with the dog food? You need some high carbon low nitrogen material ('browns') to go with that high nitrogen dog food. Check the FAQ page for more on this.

How big is this 'tub'? Does it have drain holes?

yes did i have some green veggies and some fruit and root skins in it and yes i have drain holes. im in co and it was been dry and hot for the last week and the tub is 114 liters

oh and i have some brown

30 gal or so then....that's small for a compost bin but I've done that same thing and it can work fine.

It is probably too wet and if it smells bad it may be too high in nitrogen. You can dump it and let it dry out a bit or reload it layering with some dry browns. Keep in mind you need much more browns by weight, about 3:1 (dry weight that is so it's hard to guesstimate if it's wet). But dog food being high in protein is a high grade Green so use plenty of browns.

It will right itself and you will get compost.

I once found turkeys for 39 cents a pound after thanksgiving. Bought a couple and kicked off a woodchip-intensive compost pile with them. I think it was cheaper and less effort than any other source of nitrogen I could think of. Worked great.

I eat the turkey and make stock out of the bones and scraps, THEN compost what's left. Shame to waste all that good quality lean protein. It works very well - in a hot pile made of the last grass and leaf mowing of the season, all I usually find come spring is the breast bone.

You can buy 50-pound bags of alfalfa cubes or pellets and use in the compost pile. However, in my yard, there isn't really any lack of greens. It's the browns that I usually have to work for!

I wasn’t planning on buying dog kibbles (dry) just for the purpose of adding it to my compost bin. But he’s a big dog, very messy eater and so he leaves kibbles all over the floor. So they add up during the day and I wondered if I can scoop them up and add them in. It’s expensive grain free so I’m trying to save wasted food. what are your thoughts?

In small amounts like your swept up kibbles will be fine.

Just keep in mind it's high in protein (i.e. nitrogen) so if you get any odors, add more browns to offset it.