(no subject)
So we here are animal lovers, a fact which I'm sure you probably assumed at this point. As for myself and my partner, we are most assuredly Cat people. That isn't to say we have any particular aversion to the canine species, because we don't. I, in fact, have had a few dogs over the years, and Kit at least one as well. They are loyal, fun, and great companions. It's just that there is something about the cuddly aloofness of a cat that really does it for us.
But this post is not about what animals we prefer and why, but rather what do to with what all animals, no matter what they are, leave behind: poop.
Now there is a lot of information available on what one can and can't do with different types of animal droppings, but it seems to be somewhat limited to droppings of an overtly useful nature. Rabbit and pig, for example, make great fertilizer and a quick Google search will reveal a 1001 different ways to harvest, dry, macerate, mix, apply and generally put said droppings to use. But what about some of the less useful droppings, such as the most common: dog and cat? It's hard to find much about disposal of these droppings. Usually options are limited to:
So most of you are by now asking why, exactly, it is difficult to find info on what to do with dog and cat poop, and why it is difficult to do anything with. The answer has to do with the actual content of the poo. Both dog and cat poo, but cat poo especially, is home to some really nasty microorganisms. A hefty percent of dog poo (50 to 75 percent, depending on who you ask) contains eggs of the Toxocara canis, otherwise known as the large roundworm. Those eggs can remain dormant in the soil for up to 10 years, and any contact with you, your food, or the plants growing your food can put you at risk. Similarly, in cats, we find oocysts in the fecal matter, which are the means by which a nasty critter called Toxoplasma spreads itself. Toxoplasma is particularly nasty to humans with taxed immune systems, which is why you will always hear pregnant women being told to avoid having anything to do with cat poop at all. What this also means is that using cat or dog poo as manure for a vegetable garden is a big no-no.
This doesn't mean that you can't do something with it. Just because you have to be careful where you spread the result doesn't mean you can't compost dog or cat poo. You just have to be careful how you go about doing it, and we're going to show you how. You might be tempted to just throw your pet waste in the regular compost pile, but again, it is not a smart thing to do. You have to make sure that no one goes digging around in that pile, that kids stay away from it, that it doesn't get used with anything edible, and so on. It is much easier to build a second, smaller system exclusively for pet waste. The whole process is actually quite simple and can be completed in about an hour.
Firstly, you should pick a spot that is:
As seen here, my spot was near a stand of trees behind my house out of view.
You will then need the following:
In essence, we will be digging a large hole with a little chimney on top in which all the waste will be deposited in order to biodegrade. So the first step, obviously, is to dig that hole using the digging impliment of your choice. Feel free to wet the soil down if it makes it easier for you to dig. Now you want the thing pretty deep, because depending on how many pets you have it could fill faster then it breaks down if you don't start out with a deep enough hole. 3 feet deep by 2 feet wide should be plenty for a 2 to 3 pet houseold.
Alternatively, you can use creative types of holes to maximize your space, as below:
I dug a little shallower on one side and angled the hole to the side some, as far as I could reach under with my hand and shovel, to create as much space as I could. As long as the hole is deep and sturdy, there is no wrong way to dig it.
Some people who have done this said they purchased a small plastic garbage can and removed the bottom to use as a liner for the hole. Such a thing really isn't nescesary and just adds more waste. We already bury enough plastic as it is, we don't need to be burying anymore (although you could leave the can lip above the ground, paint the lid, and add a little bit of kitch your out of the way spot).
However you do it, once you have your hole dug, the next and arguably most important step is to condtion it to recive the fecal matter. This is where the lime or septic starter comes into play. Most home and garden stores will have either. I myself picked up a big bag o' lime from the local garden shop for a few bucks.
If you have some spare cash and live near a gardening or grow store, you can also check and see if they have special enzymes for high acidity composting. If they have them, ask if they will work with pet compost and feel free to use that if they will. Otherwise, take about 2 cups of the lime or starter and sprinkle it throughout the hole. Please note that 2 cups is for a 3x2 foot hole, so scale accordingly, but it doesn't have to be exact. Might also want to check the packaging of the septic starter for alternative dosing info, just keeping mind, again, we're dealing with waste with a much higher acidity then normal. Dilute the lime or starter with water, about 6 parts to one, gradually so that the lime or starter can soak in.
As a side note, you could, I suppose, use both starter AND lime, but I am not sure. The septic starter contains microbes that help break down waste and jump start the process, and the lime takes the edge off the acidity so that Earth can do her thing on her own. I'm sure that the septic starter is hobbled a bit by the higher acidity of pet waste, but then again it's a super dose of microbes, so I suppose it would even out. I'd be cautious about adding the lime as well as I fear that the inconsistent rollercoaster pH of the soil might mess with the microbes too much, but feel free to try it and let me know. I'm just speculating.
So once you've conditioned and watered your hole, it's time to put a roof on the thing. For this, you'll need the scissors, the cone, the dirt you dug out, and possibly the scrap stuff you gathered.
Firstly, cut the top part off of the cone. You want the hole in the middle large enough to comfortably scoop the waste into. 5 or 6 inches across should be plenty. Now comes the part that requires a little creativity. You want to position the cone so that it sits on top of the hole, but not all the way inside it. Unless you have some sort of mutant road cone with a huge foot, or you dug a narrow hole, you will likely need to use the scrap materials to build a sort of support, as follows:
Don't forget, your support system has to hold the weight of not only the cone, but any dirt you use to cover things over with as well, which can be more then you think. My first hole collapsed in on itself after 2 days of rain. What I ended up doing was using thick sticks to create a sort of # shape wedged into the walls of the hole. I sat a thin piece of cardboard into which I'd cut a hole over that so the dirt wouldn't fall in between, and then sat the cone on top of that, lastly carefully filling in dirt on the "roof" to make it even with the rest of the area. If all went well, you should have something that looks like these:
And that is really all there is to it. All you do now is scoop your waste in the hole and add a little more lime and water every other week or so. If your hole fills, you can cap it however you like and let it work for a few months, and start another hole, hopefully a bigger one this time. You can then either leave the old hole undisturbed, or check it every so often, adding lime or starter, until it's a good consistency for fertilizer. Again, I must stress that if you use what you make for fertilizer, never under any circumstance should it be used for anything edible, or where children will play. But other then that, that's all there is to making an easy, inexpensive and eco friendly solution for your house pet poo.
But this post is not about what animals we prefer and why, but rather what do to with what all animals, no matter what they are, leave behind: poop.
Now there is a lot of information available on what one can and can't do with different types of animal droppings, but it seems to be somewhat limited to droppings of an overtly useful nature. Rabbit and pig, for example, make great fertilizer and a quick Google search will reveal a 1001 different ways to harvest, dry, macerate, mix, apply and generally put said droppings to use. But what about some of the less useful droppings, such as the most common: dog and cat? It's hard to find much about disposal of these droppings. Usually options are limited to:
- Throw it away. Collect it with a scoop apparatus of some kind, or line the area where your pet poops with a bag of some sort that can be collected up, and toss it in the garbage. This is problematic because bags, the inevitable increased litter waste for cats, and the waste itself all add to our household trash output, and no one really wants to deal with poop in the garbage anyway. It's messy and smells and makes things unpleasant.
- Flush it. Really only viable for cats, unless you care to scoop up your yard and carry it through your house. This poses it's own set of problems, namely added stress to the plumbing. Wherever your flushed water goes will end up having to deal with the waste. If you have a septic field, pet poo is added stress on that field, and may imbalance the enzymes present due to the generally higher acidity of pet poo. Said poo doesn't fare as well in the city sewers either, which again are set up for human waste. To compensate, lots of municipalities will overuse chemicals in an attempt to handle the poo, or will be forced to undertake expensive cleaning and and treating regimens every few months to deal with the unprocessed matter. And that's just the poop. What about a cat's litter? That all has to get dealt with too, and litter like clay can cause a lot of problems. Either way, it's not that great an option.
- Leave it. This isn't really an option at all. You can't just NOT clean a litterbox, after all, and most cities have laws about not picking up after your pooch.
So most of you are by now asking why, exactly, it is difficult to find info on what to do with dog and cat poop, and why it is difficult to do anything with. The answer has to do with the actual content of the poo. Both dog and cat poo, but cat poo especially, is home to some really nasty microorganisms. A hefty percent of dog poo (50 to 75 percent, depending on who you ask) contains eggs of the Toxocara canis, otherwise known as the large roundworm. Those eggs can remain dormant in the soil for up to 10 years, and any contact with you, your food, or the plants growing your food can put you at risk. Similarly, in cats, we find oocysts in the fecal matter, which are the means by which a nasty critter called Toxoplasma spreads itself. Toxoplasma is particularly nasty to humans with taxed immune systems, which is why you will always hear pregnant women being told to avoid having anything to do with cat poop at all. What this also means is that using cat or dog poo as manure for a vegetable garden is a big no-no.
This doesn't mean that you can't do something with it. Just because you have to be careful where you spread the result doesn't mean you can't compost dog or cat poo. You just have to be careful how you go about doing it, and we're going to show you how. You might be tempted to just throw your pet waste in the regular compost pile, but again, it is not a smart thing to do. You have to make sure that no one goes digging around in that pile, that kids stay away from it, that it doesn't get used with anything edible, and so on. It is much easier to build a second, smaller system exclusively for pet waste. The whole process is actually quite simple and can be completed in about an hour.
Firstly, you should pick a spot that is:
- Away from your other compost piles.
- Away from curious kids (and curious adults for that matter).
- Not near a direct source of water (away from wells and pumps and streams and such).
- Easy to dig, and dig deep.
- Somewhat out of the way in general.
As seen here, my spot was near a stand of trees behind my house out of view.
You will then need the following:
- The perfect spot, as discussed above.
- A large sized road cone, usually orange.
- A shovel, spade, hands, or other digging utensil.
- Water
- Lime (the kind used as lawn conditioner) or septic tank starter.
- Scrap wood, sturdy sticks, and maybe a piece of cardboard (optional, you may not need it).
- Scissors.
In essence, we will be digging a large hole with a little chimney on top in which all the waste will be deposited in order to biodegrade. So the first step, obviously, is to dig that hole using the digging impliment of your choice. Feel free to wet the soil down if it makes it easier for you to dig. Now you want the thing pretty deep, because depending on how many pets you have it could fill faster then it breaks down if you don't start out with a deep enough hole. 3 feet deep by 2 feet wide should be plenty for a 2 to 3 pet houseold.
Alternatively, you can use creative types of holes to maximize your space, as below:
I dug a little shallower on one side and angled the hole to the side some, as far as I could reach under with my hand and shovel, to create as much space as I could. As long as the hole is deep and sturdy, there is no wrong way to dig it.
Some people who have done this said they purchased a small plastic garbage can and removed the bottom to use as a liner for the hole. Such a thing really isn't nescesary and just adds more waste. We already bury enough plastic as it is, we don't need to be burying anymore (although you could leave the can lip above the ground, paint the lid, and add a little bit of kitch your out of the way spot).
However you do it, once you have your hole dug, the next and arguably most important step is to condtion it to recive the fecal matter. This is where the lime or septic starter comes into play. Most home and garden stores will have either. I myself picked up a big bag o' lime from the local garden shop for a few bucks.
If you have some spare cash and live near a gardening or grow store, you can also check and see if they have special enzymes for high acidity composting. If they have them, ask if they will work with pet compost and feel free to use that if they will. Otherwise, take about 2 cups of the lime or starter and sprinkle it throughout the hole. Please note that 2 cups is for a 3x2 foot hole, so scale accordingly, but it doesn't have to be exact. Might also want to check the packaging of the septic starter for alternative dosing info, just keeping mind, again, we're dealing with waste with a much higher acidity then normal. Dilute the lime or starter with water, about 6 parts to one, gradually so that the lime or starter can soak in.
As a side note, you could, I suppose, use both starter AND lime, but I am not sure. The septic starter contains microbes that help break down waste and jump start the process, and the lime takes the edge off the acidity so that Earth can do her thing on her own. I'm sure that the septic starter is hobbled a bit by the higher acidity of pet waste, but then again it's a super dose of microbes, so I suppose it would even out. I'd be cautious about adding the lime as well as I fear that the inconsistent rollercoaster pH of the soil might mess with the microbes too much, but feel free to try it and let me know. I'm just speculating.
So once you've conditioned and watered your hole, it's time to put a roof on the thing. For this, you'll need the scissors, the cone, the dirt you dug out, and possibly the scrap stuff you gathered.
Firstly, cut the top part off of the cone. You want the hole in the middle large enough to comfortably scoop the waste into. 5 or 6 inches across should be plenty. Now comes the part that requires a little creativity. You want to position the cone so that it sits on top of the hole, but not all the way inside it. Unless you have some sort of mutant road cone with a huge foot, or you dug a narrow hole, you will likely need to use the scrap materials to build a sort of support, as follows:
Don't forget, your support system has to hold the weight of not only the cone, but any dirt you use to cover things over with as well, which can be more then you think. My first hole collapsed in on itself after 2 days of rain. What I ended up doing was using thick sticks to create a sort of # shape wedged into the walls of the hole. I sat a thin piece of cardboard into which I'd cut a hole over that so the dirt wouldn't fall in between, and then sat the cone on top of that, lastly carefully filling in dirt on the "roof" to make it even with the rest of the area. If all went well, you should have something that looks like these:
And that is really all there is to it. All you do now is scoop your waste in the hole and add a little more lime and water every other week or so. If your hole fills, you can cap it however you like and let it work for a few months, and start another hole, hopefully a bigger one this time. You can then either leave the old hole undisturbed, or check it every so often, adding lime or starter, until it's a good consistency for fertilizer. Again, I must stress that if you use what you make for fertilizer, never under any circumstance should it be used for anything edible, or where children will play. But other then that, that's all there is to making an easy, inexpensive and eco friendly solution for your house pet poo.