My dog and some squirrels. I might have done a possum but that was so long ago I can't remember what we did with that.

EEEEEEEEUUUUUUYYYYYYYYYYHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm new here and beginning to think I'll not check into THIS thread again! You people are brave...I'm afraid to compost bread after reading some of these things. Placenta? Your dog? Is this legal? :) Calling Jeffrey Dahmer!!!?!??!

Bwahahahahahahaha...ha...ha...HA!

I consider this a very advanced topic in composting. You will never read about composting animals, meat, or even carnivore dung anywhere but here. If you are new to composting, stick with composting leaves, grass, and banana skins. Please continue reading the other topics about bins and how to get your pile to warm up.

The bread thing is a joke to everyone except the glutaphobics.

Entire families of superannuated gerbils. They disappear fast but the incisors last a long time. Years later I occasionally turn up a tiny pair of yellow buck teeth. Plus, of course innumerable chicken,turkey and other meat bones added after boiling off the meat for stock. My garden tends to like like a charnel house to the uninitiated.

A road-kill possum. And the temperature shot up from 110 to 140 within 5 days. I recommend it. I am looking for more.

I've composted mice, moles, voles and baby rabbits, victims of my dog's hunting prowess.

I've also composted fish guts and other bones...

hahahahhahahaahhahaa

All sorts of dead birds, even wild turkeys, not to mention frozen plucked ones, squirrels, mice, pack rats, voles, rabbits, tons of fish parts as we fish regularly. Nothing really unusual. ;)

Dave

Trout ---Bream --- Bass---all fish I was gonna plant whole under my tomato plants but ended up in the compost pile ----
I think a raccon got into it one night and was so disgusted he left them alone ---

reburied them deep never to be seen again ---

OBTW Lloyd ----we got 3" of snow Sunday morning during Mass---gone by Monday and we will be 76* and sunny this Saturday ----gotta love the deep south -----

JB

Doh! We are "up" to -12C right now with a windchill of -22C. I have to go out and blow out the driveway from last weeks snow fall.

You guys just don't fight fair! :-)

See ya

Lloyd

well lets see. All the bones from the chicken, beef, etc that I eat and any meat leftovers that go bad (rarely happens). Occasionally some spoiled milk. I think the most unusual thing I put into a pile, my parents, not mine, was a groundhog that had been terrorizing my mom's garden. I didn't feel like transporting a dead, bleeding groundhog to my house or it would have gone into mine. I find it ironic that this year the black dirt that's all that remains will be helping my mom's garden grow this year.

"I think the most unusual thing I put into a pile, my parents"

That caused a few skips of the ole heartbeat!

Lloyd

Raccoons.

I buried our dog the way I'd like to be buried myself. I dug up about 10" of earth in a natural dip in the forest floor just beyond the garden, laid him down in it, covered him with a foot of compost, covered that with straw and threw flower seeds over all. Two years later he's growing a healthy patch of yarrow, foxgloves and sweet williams. And he's feeding the red osier dogwood beside him (I chose the spot figuring he'd appreciate that - ol' Buddy enjoyed a good pun).

The problem with my own burial is my wife, of all people. She's always reminded me of Thelma and Louise combined but when I asked her to do the same for me she said, Isn't that illegal?

There is one other place I know of you are likely to read about composting animals. The humanure handbook website forum. It wasn't till I started humanure composting that I learned how to get a really good hot compost pile that would easily handle rotting carcass and control smell and other animals digging it up.

So what have we composted. I really can't even count the bones and scraps of animals we have eaten since we always compost all food scraps that don't go to the chickens or worm bins. It is a firm rule here to avoid putting anything stinky in the trash can. So, animal bodies in our compost bin lately.
3 sick chickens we didn't want to make the rest of the flock sick.
Any dead squirrels we find around the house.
12 rats we caugh
And all fish parts that the chickens don't get, I've found that burying fish parts causes critters to dig up the yard or whatever plant I put over it so composting seems to be the best way for use to take care of it.

I agree that this is an advanced composting thread. No one who is not confident of their ability to manage a hot compost pile should be putting dead bodies in it.

1 little mouse. A few friends of mine composted their foul's placenta.

The trick to burying fish is to not get any fish smell on anything. If you get it on the shovel blade, if you dribble a drop of fish liquid on the ground around the hole, you're in trouble.

I've never composted anything with fur on it, although I did once compost a fur. I've composted fish, and deer meat and a whole Thanksgiving turkey.

yeah. Worded for maximum suspense. :)