Steel
|
Use for chicken bonesI boil up chicken carcasses for stocks and soups, but what can I do with the pile of bones afterwards
I can't add them to the compost heap or bury them in the kitchen garden in case I attract rats.
Any suggestions? Is there any useful purpose for them?
I thought about perhaps grinding them up (with what I'm not sure at the moment) to use as a fertiliser around plants?
|
colour it green
|
we send ours to landfill.. and I'm ok with that as they will rot eventually.
I never understand this thing about meat and bones attracting rats.. rats eat a lot of vegetation too, and so will be attracted to a meat free compost heap. Rat poison is usually laced wheat grain...
|
Slim
|
I, personally, have never had a problem with rats on the compost. (that doesn't mean I've never had them, just never seen them...) and I've been known to toss bones, meat, fat, etc on to the compost. Around here, I would be more worried about it attracting raccoons, but they undoubtedly paw through compost piles anyway.
Not that I'm advising you to compost them, just that I've never had a problem with it.
Grinding them into bone meal sounds like a great fertilizer, how would you go about grinding them?
|
sally_in_wales
|
in small quantities bones will burn mixed with other hot fuels, but they do have a distinctive smell
|
vegplot
|
I'd be tempted to dig them in as they are and extract the last goodness as organic matter in soil.
|
dpack
|
good heap eats bones
|
Steel
|
| colour it green wrote: | | I never understand this thing about meat and bones attracting rats.. rats eat a lot of vegetation too, and so will be attracted to a meat free compost heap. Rat poison is usually laced wheat grain... |
Same here. I used to keep pet rats at one point and they ate anything and everything, meat, veggies, the cuff of my best mate's coat, etc. But for some reason I've always obeyed the mantra about not putting meat in a compost heap. I fear I've been indoctrinated. Perhaps I need to be really brave, run outside and fling some meat bones in.
Then hide behind the sofa and see if the Compost Police visit.... 
|
Steel
|
| Slim wrote: | | Grinding them into bone meal sounds like a great fertilizer, how would you go about grinding them? |
I did think about one of those old fashioned manual coffee bean grinders that has a little drawer in front that collects the grindings. You could dry the bones out in a low oven first.
Typically my father got rid of one last year, after it had sat on the top shelf in his kitchen for 35 years collecting dust.
|
gnome
|
i wouldnt worry too much about attracting rats - there is a very simple solution. Get a cat.
|
Tavascarow
|
I burn them on the woodburner then feed the soil with the ash.
|
JB
|
I would have thought that by the time you've boiled them up for stocks and soups there would be little left to attract a rat, or at least the little that is left would be no more attractive than the vegetable waste.
|
James
|
After I've boiled the bones for stock, a potato masher (or even your hands) can mash the now soft bones down to a slimy brown mush. Dig this into your veg beds and it'll be gone in no time.
This is the best fertiliser you can get your hands on- it's like gold dust for hungry plants.
|
nettie
|
| James wrote: | After I've boiled the bones for stock, a potato masher (or even your hands) can mash the now soft bones down to a slimy brown mush. Dig this into your veg beds and it'll be gone in no time.
This is the best fertiliser you can get your hands on- it's like gold dust for hungry plants. |
Ooo I'll give that a try.
|
James
|
I shoud add that we use a pressure cooker for cooking the carcas. I'm not sure if thats why our chicken bones are nice and soft....
|
sean
|
It is. They don't go soft with normal boiling.
|
cab
|
Wouldn't fresh boney/meaty waste, even ground up, just lead to a net loss of carbon from the soil? Isn't it a little young and hot to go straight out?
|
JB
|
| cab wrote: | | Wouldn't fresh boney/meaty waste, even ground up, just lead to a net loss of carbon from the soil? Isn't it a little young and hot to go straight out? |
Even if that was a net loss from the soil wouldn't that be only a short term effect? Wouldn't it then become available again as the bones break down?
(Although here I usually put them through the bokashi, then the compost and only then do they get to the garden so they're never that 'young' when they get there)
|
Slim
|
| cab wrote: | | Wouldn't fresh boney/meaty waste, even ground up, just lead to a net loss of carbon from the soil? Isn't it a little young and hot to go straight out? |
well, it's not like it's pure nitrogen, right? There's a lot of other stuff there that should be getting introduced to the soil. Plus, any C that is getting pulled from the soil is being split: into the portion needed by the microbes metabolism and therefore lost as CO2, but also into humus that will hold whatever N benefit you're getting.
So I guess it's basically the same C into CO2 and humus process that's taking part in your composting, but you're doing it in your garden soil. Any reason to keep your soil C in coarse organic matter and not humus?
|
cab
|
| JB wrote: |
Even if that was a net loss from the soil wouldn't that be only a short term effect? Wouldn't it then become available again as the bones break down? |
Errm...I dunno, I'd have thought that you'll get an increase in phosphate in the soil, some calcium which is neither nere nor there, but you've got lots of essentially free nitrogen too and that surely risks loss of humus?
| Quote: |
(Although here I usually put them through the bokashi, then the compost and only then do they get to the garden so they're never that 'young' when they get there) |
Same here, but bokashi causes a funny redox thing to go on, and a drop in pH, essentially it strips the nitrogen out in the form of a rich liquid; you've more or less deproteinated the material if you do that, so what you're digging in degrades more coldly than if you've got readily available nitrogen.
|
cab
|
| Slim wrote: |
well, it's not like it's pure nitrogen, right? There's a lot of other stuff there that should be getting introduced to the soil. Plus, any C that is getting pulled from the soil is being split: into the portion needed by the microbes metabolism and therefore lost as CO2, but also into humus that will hold whatever N benefit you're getting.
So I guess it's basically the same C into CO2 and humus process that's taking part in your composting, but you're doing it in your garden soil. Any reason to keep your soil C in coarse organic matter and not humus? |
All depends on how much C and N you've got in what you're diggin in really, and how quickly it degrades. The trouble with pressure cooked chicken waste is, I suspect, that you'll get very readily degraded N sources, and thats the limiting nutrient for a lot of soil bacteria so you'll now lose whatever most readily metabolised C you have to CO2, etc. Familiar story really.
|
dpack
|
the mixture tub is also a possible ,any rats trying for a meal do that pitcher plant thing and add to the mix 
|
James
|
| cab wrote: | | Wouldn't fresh boney/meaty waste, even ground up, just lead to a net loss of carbon from the soil? Isn't it a little young and hot to go straight out? |
Its no different to adding fish blood and bonemeal.
|
cab
|
| James wrote: | | cab wrote: | | Wouldn't fresh boney/meaty waste, even ground up, just lead to a net loss of carbon from the soil? Isn't it a little young and hot to go straight out? |
Its no different to adding fish blood and bonemeal. |
Which itself should be used quite sparingly, as just like adding, say, gromore, it can lead to a loss of organic matter.
|
James
|
"sparingly" is all a chicken carcass ends up being added as.
Once mashed up, you have about two pints of goo, and most of this is liquid. Spread this over a decent size bed and dig in and your talking about a sparing addition.
I take your point, however cab.
But whether you rot the carcass down in the compost heap or the soil, it will convert the same quantity of C into CO2- there will be a net loss of C from your system to the atmosphere no matter what, which will need to be replenished with another addition of C at some point. That's fine by me, because a normal healthy soil is constantly being improved with more C.
Perhaps I should have caviated my original statement by saying that the addition of chicken carcasses to ground should only be undertaken as part of a healthy, balanced soil diet. If you just relied on chicken carcasses to enrichen your soil, you'd soon have a very ill, C-deplete soil.
|
Slim
|
Most organic folks like us, actually have more organic matter than we really need. That's not to say that it isn't worth striving for more - what soil problem can't be fixed with more organic matter? But do you really need a topsoil with 12% organic matter?
I wouldn't think that you'd be doing too much devastation, unless you were really adding a lot of nitrate in one go. I've always thought it was best to mix nitrogen with lots of carbon in a well oxygenated form, and hope to facilitate it's capture into humus, etc... If you let nitrogen sit, particularly in a low oxygen environment, it will just be quickly reduced to N2 gas and escape you.
nitrate is not only ridiculously soluble, it's the second best oxidizer for most any microorganism. If I can trap some portion of it in humus, it's worth the burning of some organic matter, in my book.
|
jenjermima
|
Re: Use for chicken bones | Steel wrote: | I boil up chicken carcasses for stocks and soups, but what can I do with the pile of bones afterwards
I can't add them to the compost heap or bury them in the kitchen garden in case I attract rats.
Any suggestions? Is there any useful purpose for them?
I thought about perhaps grinding them up (with what I'm not sure at the moment) to use as a fertiliser around plants? |
I have been saving chicken bones (I've never tried any other type of bones) in the freezer. When I get a "pot full", I place them in my pressure cooker and cook for about 2 hours. They are then soft enough that they disintegrates and I can mix up with my dogs food for a special treat. As I understand, bones are a good source of calcium for dogs. I've even done a whole chicken which was a bit freezer burned.
This way, I can stretch my pets food a bit and save the bones from
adding to the trash pile.
I'm hoping this year to save the turkey bones. (I might note here that these are the bones people have eaten off of... the none eaten off of bones can be used to make stock and /then/ cooked for pets.
|
