Another Lightbulb

So again I was thinking about my compost pile (I think have a problem) and how I think I am alittle heavy on my green products so I was trying to figure out how to get increase my percentage of brown matter. I had put something up on criaglist looking for manure and didn't get any responses and was starting to loose hope on finding a good source of manure. Then I was looking at my old college website applying for a job and out of nowhere....BAM.....like I had taken a 2x4 to the head. They are a big agricultural college and have an equine center, bovine center, sheep center, and hog center and that to me sounded like 4 count them 4 different type of potential composts for my gardens next year. So I emailed the director of each center and asked what they did with their manure when they cleaned up. Today I got an email back from 3 of them, cattle, sheep, and horse and all of them said I could come take as much as I want. So now if I have it counted there will be 12 different kinds of ingredients in my pile after this weekend.

scmelik wrote:So again I was thinking about my compost pile (I think have a problem) and how I think I am alittle heavy on my green products so I was trying to figure out how to get increase my percentage of brown matter. I had put something up on criaglist looking for manure and didn't get any responses and was starting to loose hope on finding a good source of manure. Then I was looking at my old college website applying for a job and out of nowhere....BAM.....like I had taken a 2x4 to the head. They are a big agricultural college and have an equine center, bovine center, sheep center, and hog center and that to me sounded like 4 count them 4 different type of potential composts for my gardens next year. So I emailed the director of each center and asked what they did with their manure when they cleaned up. Today I got an email back from 3 of them, cattle, sheep, and horse and all of them said I could come take as much as I want. So now if I have it counted there will be 12 different kinds of ingredients in my pile after this weekend.

Howdy Scmelik:

What a find! Great resource. The horse, cattle and sheep are great. Although Mel's book does not talk about hog manure other composting books that I have read says not to use hog manure in compost for the vegetable garden. I don't recall the reasons why.

God Bless, Ward and Mary.

SCORE!

Yes, what a find. The fresh manures should get your compost pile just burning hot.

I am not sure I would use pig manure because despite the fact that most people presume that they are herbivores, pigs are in fact omnivores. Pigs will scavenge and have been known to eat any kind of food, including dead insects, worms, tree bark, rotting carcasses, garbage, and even other pigs!

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_pigs_omnivores_or_herbivores#ixzz1POG6GlmH

Furbalsmom wrote:Yes, what a find. The fresh manures should get your compost pile just burning hot.

I am not sure I would use pig manure because despite the fact that most people presume that they are herbivores, pigs are in fact omnivores. Pigs will scavenge and have been known to eat any kind of food, including dead insects, worms, tree bark, rotting carcasses, garbage, and even other pigs!

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_pigs_omnivores_or_herbivores#ixzz1POG6GlmH

Fantastic, that'll do your garden a power of good.

Furbalsmom, you're right about pigs being quite unfussy about eating other pigs. One who didn't go that route did though shovel soil up to an electric fence to short it out then ploughed straight through it, leading 5 others, to get into an orchard for plums.

Pigs don't just stop at eating each other. They consider eating the farmer too. Probably 30 years ago a local farm wife heard her 3 year old son screaming outside. She ran out to find him in the sow pen and they had started chewing on him. She managed to get him outside the pen but she never made it out alive. Someone stopped by a bit later to find the little boy bloody and scared. They looked around for the mother and only found her bones left in the pig pen. The whole herd was destroyed by authorities. The sight and smell of blood incenses hogs. That was not the only pig incident around here, luckily the others were not that catastrophic. I have done farm labor as a kid and had them push me around which leaves you uncomfortable when in a sea of always hungry hogs. So get your pig poop very carefully. I get mine from the ground around the loading shoot at a hog buying station nearby.

Wow Westie, that is just creepy. It reminds me of the Criminal Minds episode where the murderer was putting the dead bodies in the hog pen. For some reason he only kept the shoes of the victims, no bodies were ever found. I don't recall if they found bones or not but of course this was "make believe".

jymarino wrote:Wow Westie, that is just creepy. It reminds me of the Criminal Minds episode where the murderer was putting the dead bodies in the hog pen. For some reason he only kept the shoes of the victims, no bodies were ever found. I don't recall if they found bones or not but of course this was "make believe".

I believe that episode was based on the real life story about the Vancouver, BC pig farmer. He killed 20+ (some say up to 50) people, mostly women, and fed them to his pigs. He was caught in 2002.

google 'vancouver pig farmer' for lots of news sources about it

or start here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton

Ward This is not a scientific answer for why hog poop is not recommended for vegetable garden compost but the hog is an omnivore like their cousin the bear is. Since we are not to use cat or dog poop because they do eat meat products the same logic reasonably should apply to hogs. Had not given that much thought before so now may reconsider using it in my compost. Though most hogs are pen raised on corn based feeds their digestive processes could cause some conflicts being they are omnivores. Food for too much thinking gain. My QiGong instructor warns that too much thinking causes yin yang disharmony or illness in western lingo.