Hi flying fish, If I understand your intent is to have your bat colony for guano production to use as a self-reliant fertilizer. Here is a long view for your project. The nitrogen form you'll start out with is urea & you need to get that converted by bacteria to the nitrogen plants use. You are discussing container growing; so the internet advice of apply it, then wait is probably for in the ground utilization with it's bacteria. Read up on how the fresh water fish aquariums control their toxic ammonia (from excreted urea). The trick is a small separate chamber to filter the water (with it's ammonia load) over a biological culture. I propose you set one up & this will get you the end product N as useable nitrate (NO3) for container growing. There are DIY bio-filter designs you'll find (my link skill is bad) & of course products sold for this to hobbyists. What you'll need is innoculation with autotrophic bacteria to colonize the filter surface area.( You can buy this or again DIY.) Your bacteria is a long term project at first, because must breed it up to handle the volume guano you want to process. Expect to nurse it for a couple of months, but in time it will handle a batch of guano in mere days. Your set up will be to circulate diluted aerated guano/urea/ammonia through the bacteria colony living on your bio-filter substrate. For this I recommend you sterilize the guano first; you can boil it or treat it chemically with chlorine (evaporate off chlorine next day with air pump bubbler). Now you have to prepare it for the bacteria & you must tweak the pH to keep it in a range that the bacteria can work best in. There will be a pH spike at the beginning due to the ammonia concentration. Get some pH color indicator paper (pharmacy expensive or laboratory supplier cheaper) on hand. Mix the sterilized guano with water at a ratio of 1:10 by volume & set the pH initially at between 6 & 7 pH. Use battery acid (33% sulfuric acid) to make a stock solution of 5ml H2S04/1 liter water & drop by drop this will let you get the pH spike down to where you want it. Now you are ready to feed the guano water to the bacteria colony. The bacteria will work between 6.3 - 9.0 pH. Monitor the solution as it will next drift down in pH & you may need to buffer the pH up (you do not use sulfuric acid for that). Your batch size, operating temperature ( +/- 28* Celcius) & bacteria herd will be what determine when the NO3 is done. When shut down circulating system retest the pH & adjust it to (ideally) 6.5 pH. Then let the muck settle & you can decant/siphon off the fluid to use. You want a liquid with TDS (total dissolved solids) of between 800 - 1,300 ppm (part per million) to use as fertilizer. The easiest way to measure this is with a meter designed for reading EC (electrical conductivity). If resulting ppm range is either too low, or too high, add more guano solids or conversely more dilution water. (The hard way to measure ppm: filter the muck & let it dry, so then can measure it at ratio of 0.001 gram per 1 liter of water for each 1 ppm solution.) Your guano's NPK proportions you will eventually find usefull to know.

Actually, migrating birds are the common suspects when it comes to spreading Type A viruses. Bats are mammals, not birds. They hibernate or do a combination of a short migration combined with hibernation. What's new is finding this virus in bats, not because it hasn't been there before, but because they haven't looked there before. From the article: Despite this warning, scientists have not been able to grow the new bat virus in chicken eggs or human cells, which is possible with existing flu strains. This suggests that the immediate risk of infection to humans is small. Rather than highlighting a danger to human health, this study is likely to guide further research that may improve the understanding of potential pandemic flu threats to humans in the future. Here is a link that might be useful: Unique new flu virus found

Wear fitting dust masks when you collect it. If you really want to know what it contains, take a sample to your local soil-test people and have them test it. I doubt that it would cost any more than a basic soil sample (maybe $10), but ask. And ask them how much to use per 100 sq ft, then you can figure anything up or down from that. And may I say I'm jealous? Guano has been a valuable commodity for centuries. Sue

My house in Elgin, IL is a very old (oldest part pre-dates 1859) 3 storey Queen Anne Victorian, and it's our dream house. We found out from neighbors after we moved in some 19 years ago that it is known for having bats in the attic. We saw our first one sometime during our first spring, when it fluttered across our TV room, frantically trying to find a way out. Of course, we panicked and immediately called an animal control guy to get it out. He searched for hours and couldn't find it. $50 later, I searched through Old House Journals until I found some hints -- turn all the lights on, open all the doors, flap towels at it until it leaves. We're old hands at it now. Our record for escorting a bat out of the house is 32 seconds! Many people have tried to find out how they're getting in, but even after we had a new roof put on, they still get in during the semi-annual migration in spring and fall. We just calmly escort them into the mosquito clouds out among our pines. Bats are beneficial creatures, but we are very careful not to touch them, ever. I have occasionally seen droppings in the attic, so to avoid stirring up dust, I spray it with some cleaner, cover it with a wet paper towel, then use a broom to push it into a dust pan and dispose of it. I would trust a commercial supply of guano, but would still use gloves and a mask when mixing it up. One more funny bat story -- one early September evening, we were having a meeting of volunteers who were helping to staff a historic house tour of our home. I was late arriving home, so my husband was holding down the fort in the front parlor. I dashed upstairs to change out of my work clothes, and as I was doing so, felt the hair on the side of my head move just a tiny bit. I had my back to a closet that had a loosely covered opening to the attic from where it had probably entered the closet and my bedroom. Instinctively, I brushed my hand against my hair and it fell to the bed, right on my pillow, stunned. I quickly grabbed a towel and covered it up so it wouldn't escape and try to hide. Then I went downstairs and asked my husband why he hadn't told me we had a bat in the bedroom, unaware that the room had gone silent when I entered. So, all 27 of our house tour volunteers heard me and a group gasp went up! I calmly explained that it was sleeping on my pillow, and that we would take it outside before the volunteers toured the house after the meeting. That set them to laughing, apparently surprised by my casual attitude about having a bat sleeping on my pillow. It's just another weird wonderful thing about living in a Victorian home, I guess. At Halloween, we hang plastic bats on the porch gingerbread cause usually by that day, we are past the migration visits and we miss them. So we are carrying on the tradition of being a "bat house" whether we like it or not! I'd rather they stayed out, but we love our house and they do too.