Faeces

Introduction

This is an optimistic view of processing cat and dog faeces. "Optimistic" because we are well aware of the doom and gloom school of being safe, and you will find that approach referenced here, but while we recognise the potential dangers of health hazards, we recognise too that children play on grass that is populated by cat and dog faeces, so we will strive for a rational approach to the problem of composting pet faeces, primarily cat- and dog - in a cold-climate apartment.

We anticipate in starting that the product of this vermicomposting effort might have its destination as top-dressing fertilizer for public lawns. That is, we are not striving to introduce the compost into the general domestic soil (vegetables, fruits etc.) but to find a safe haven where it can not do as much harm as other forms of health hazards.

Specific needs

I live in a small apartment in Toronto Canada with a ginger cat who, at times, thinks he is a Border Collie, so bright is he. Jupiter is a clean cat, never leaves the apartment, and I have no reason to suspect he harbours any terrible disease or parasite. I have not administered any anti-worming products or other treatments in the three years he has lived with me.

Jupiter has a bowl of dry-food and a bowl of water always at hand, gets a spoonful of tinned meat at lunchtime, and about a dozen "treat" snacks in the evening. His litter tray is stocked with non-scented clumping clay, and I sieve it out on odd-numbered days of the month.

Life is regular and predictable.

The litter

The clumped litter is scooped into a plastic bag that lines a four-litre (one gallon) ice cream tub, lidded, and this tub fills about every three weeks. I started a new bag today (Monday, September 04, 2006).

In the past I have dropped the bag of soiled litter into the dumpster, reasoning that one shopping bag of garbage every three weeks is not a significant burden to the garbage problem in this city.

With my success in efficient tower vermicomposters for kitchen and paper scraps, I have begun to wonder if I might not be able to reduce my obnoxious garbage even further.

Reference material

I spent some time searching the world wide web to gather opinions on composting pet faeces. The links and quotes provided here are not in any way an endorsement; I read what I could to form my opinions, and these links will give you a starting-point for consideration

General constraints

Most sources mention common-sense procedures “Basic hygiene - wear disposable gloves when handling cat faeces, contaminated soil, litter trays; Clean out litter trays daily - so removing faeces before the infective stage oocysts have developed; Wash hands rigorously after handling cat litter trays or contaminated soil; Prevent children playing in areas known to be contaminated with cat faeces - soil borders in gardens, sand pits, and so on; Prevent direct contact between potentially infected cats (especially rodent eaters) and pregnant women, young children and people with a compromised immune system")”, and these guidelines parallel advice given for painting areas around the house, handling of garbage in general, handling of bio-medical waste, and so on. In other words, reduce as much as possible the chance of any unnecessary hazard.

In some instances, the material might seem alarming "In a large survey of 1000 pregnant women in Europe it was found that the main source of infection with Toxoplasma was eating undercooked meat", but note that the study was of 1,000 pregnant women, and we are not told whether all 1,000 of the women were infected, or whether only three of the 1,000 were infected. Many people see the figure "1,000" and become alarmed, yet Europe has a population of about 807,000,000 ( http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm ). Of these 50% are women, say 400,000,000, so 1,000 represents but 0.0000025 or 0.00025% of the population as a whole. To my mind that is a small sample.

Many sites counsel against composting cat and dog faeces, however I am greatly puzzled by this.

In the natural world, animal faeces are broken down as plant nutrients. Our world is un-natural, in that we harbour and concentrate pet faeces in a tub, and then further seek to harbour the faeces in a compost bin.

I can see clearly that improper concentration of (any kind of) faeces has potential for trouble. That's why we humans, concentrated as we are in towns and cities, use water-closets for our faeces. Yet who has not, camping out in the bush, dug a hole and covered it, feeling confident that nature will take its course?

The solution to composting pet faeces seems to me to be that of obtaining the resources used by nature to work in our unnatural concentration of faeces. That is, I ought to ask how nature achieves its treatment of faeces, and then make my composter host receptive to that treatment.

I am also alert to generic advice such as "Adding meat to compost is generally not a good idea as it will tend to attract rodents and flies". Such constraints do not apply to a well-maintained vermicomposter. I regularly dump cooked meat bones in my vermicomposter, small doses of uncooked meat trim, well-covered. The bacteria attack the meat and bones and the worms eat the bacteria.

Any web site related to commercial or municipal composting will caution against faeces, as it ought. Such processors are interested in a quick compost process and a safe product for general-purpose use. We are interested in a specific input, and have no intention of making our vermicompost available for indiscriminate use.

I note that the Chichester site suggests that adding small amounts of wood ash will work, although most counselors argue against wood ash in compost; spread it directly on the ground, they say.

There is a dearth of proven techniques. I begin to suspect that much of the caution is based on hearsay rather than on genuine study of facts.

I am reminded of the blowable myth that "Red Wriggler worms will eat their own weight in two days", a claim often made by people who have weighed their kitchen scraps before adding them to the vermicomposter. To counter this argument I dis-member a head of lettuce and leave it in the sunlight for one day, thereby proving that virtual worms work even faster! The problem with un-scientific statements arises because people do not consider possibilities, such as vegetable scraps being 90% or more water.

I am especially wary of statements such as "The trophozoite cannot live long outside of the body, therefore it cannot spread the infection to others. The inactive cyst, on the other hand, can exist for prolonged periods outside the body", no matter how well-meaning. "Management Measures", and without proper quantifiers "long" and " prolonged periods" carry very little weight in any reasoned argument.

Into Action

I have a broom-closet vermicomposter which is driven by my kitchen scraps. It is rarely half full. I have two tower composters on the balcony, one is Ľ full of shredded paper (this year I demonstrated vermicomposting with Shredded Paper and Coffee Grounds only) and the second is about 1/3 full with general compost.

I think I will use the shredded paper as a base, onto it I will dump the general compost. That will make an initial bed and habitat for the worms.

Into this tower I will place a gallon of unscented clumped litter every two weeks or so, and cover that with a bin of shredded paper.

My theory is that the worms will live in and eat out the original bedding and then shift into gear attacking the cat faeces.

I may build a shell around the one-foot square tower and fill it with insulating shredded paper to help it survive the cold winter here.

Friday, September 08, 2006

More thoughts.

The newbie has enough problems with over-feeding, over-watering, under-watering My First Vermicomposter. It makes sense not to burden them with extra potential problems such as flies-from-eggs (meat), smell (dairy), or smell (faeces). However, rather than say "never compost pet faeces", we can lay the groundwork for progress by stressing "vermicompost your kitchen vegetable scraps". Indeed, we would do well to avoid mentioning fruit to newbies, since fruit (including tomatoes) is perhaps more likely to attract and breed insects than are carrot peelings.

That is, while I am not prepared to encourage newbies to attempt to vermicompost faeces, I'd rather not lay down a quasi-authoritative DO NOT on their first day.

Vermicompost paper and vegetable matter. It works.

I've proven this year that a tower vermicomposter fed only shredded paper and an occasional bowl of coffee grounds is a thriving worm environment. Paper scraps and vegetable peelings is OK for newbies.

Municipal authorities have to cover themselves against liability, as does any commercial contractor. To them it makes sense to say "Don't try to handle faeces", of which vermicomposting is a part of "handling".

Health authorities need to caution "Don't vermicompost faeces", because to them that is a simpler message than "Don't vermicompost faeces if you have sick, elderly, inform or very young humans in your household". That is the target group for any malady, including influenza, SARS, AIDS and so on.

I believe that healthy people seem to cope quite well with pet faeces. We are all scooping out litter trays on a daily basis, bagging the stuff, breathing the inevitable dust, being licked by our pets and stroking our pets within 24 hours of their use of the litter tray, and so on. Our children walk, run and play on public and private lawns where pets run free. We do not have a faeces epidemic; healthy human bodies can cope with a minor foreign invasion.

If it were not so, by now we would have seen banned all domestic pets.

So we bag our scooped kitty litter, tie a knot in the plastic bag, and drop it down the garbage chute, where it explodes on impact seven floors below, covering the dumpster contents with a patina of faeces. The garbage truck comes and lifts the dumpster over its head, then crushes the bag, emptying its dried contents, after which, the bag is shredded on the sorting table at the recycling centre - which is why those guys are wearing masks and gloves.

Surely diverting pet faeces from garbage has to be a good thing for the people who manage our garbage?

The optimistic view of processing cat and dog faeces suggests that it will be experienced vermicomposters who turn to this route, after a year or more of regular vermicomposting. They have overcome initial failures with bins (over-feeding, over-watering, under-watering), and have managed one or two bins and now wonder what else can be put in the bin.

Perhaps, like me, they have bravely dropped in a chicken or chop bone, against all advice, just to see what happens, and they have been pleasantly surprised to recover a bone from which every bit of soft (cooked, burned) flesh has been stripped.

So what is wrong with faeces? They ask?

We should be prepared to answer their question honestly, rather than give the knee-jerk safe reaction.

Nature composts faeces very successfully. How then can we work with nature in nature's work?

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Three months have elapsed.

I have been tipping the screened clumped kitty litter into a tower vermicomposter on the balcony and covering it with shredded paper.

The material descends and I scoop it out and toss it into a second tower vermicomposter. I reckon that this helps to mix and aerate the material while affording me a sampling view every couple of weeks. Soon we will freeze over and material will no longer descend. By that time I hope to have the second tower full and the first tower near-empty, and ready to receive a winter's worth of output from my clean cat.

Today I was delighted to find that the worms are fat, robust and pregnant. Pregnancy no doubt in anticipation of freezing to death over winter, so "Let's lay as many eggs as we can before we go".

Here are some photos:

The primary tower vermicomposter is the taller one, near the balcony door – as in "lean around the door, toss and close the door". The outfall is a rather messy gooey grey sludge, the result of the clay mixed with moisture. The worms have been at work! I scoop outfall into the four-litre ice-cream tub and toss it into the shorter tower.

Below is a close-up of the outfall. Worms are visible. The grey matter is clay-sludge; the brown matter is soil and vegetable matter. Shredded paper can be seen hanging, ready to topple down.

Below is a more detailed look at my fat, pregnant, robust worms, cavorting around in the paper and kitty-litter mixture.

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