Fish carcasses & guts in compost?

bogydave · Sat Jul 23, 2011 12:41 am

I had over 100 sockeye salmon we cleaned & had about 40 gallons of fish parts to dispose of. Heads carcasses & entrails.
So I made a new pallet bin, air pipes on the bottom, 8" of Horse Manure compost (HMC), a layer of fish parts, more HMC, Fish, HMC then 2 air pipes (horizontal) Fish HMC up to 3' then 2 more air pipes & topped it off with HMC to help with the odor it may produce.

Anyone have any ideas if this will work?

Was thinking I may need to cover it if it gets too smelly.
Don't plan on turning it anytime soon, maybe next year.

If it works it may be super charged compost.

cynthia_h · Sat Jul 23, 2011 1:51 am

You'll need some browns to balance off all those greens--yes, this is mostly protein/nitrogen-rich stuff. It will smell to high heaven without some browns/carbon-rich helpers. Even shredded newspaper or office/house paper (junk mail? got old phone books? neighbors got 'em?) works well. (For years, I had no access to leaves, and my main source of browns was...yep...paper.)

Otherwise, sounds like a GREAT haul!

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

rainbowgardener · Sat Jul 23, 2011 6:50 am

absolutely agree with cynthia about the "browns" -- see the Greens/Browns sticky at the top of this forum for more ideas of what to use. Straw, sawdust, fall leaves...

But also, what makes compost so magic, complete nutrition with every trace element and micronutrient, is that ordinarily compost piles are composed of a large variety of materials, lots of different weeds, lots of different foods in the kitchen scraps, etc. We usually say no more than 10% of the pile should be one ingredient (where ingredient is specific, fall leaves isn't one ingredient, but oak leaves are, kitchen scraps isn't one ingredient but onion skins are). Sounds like you are making a 2 ingredient pile, 50% each. I'd look around, collect some kitchen scraps, pulled weeds, yard trimmings, and "brown" stuff and throw that all together with your manure and fish scraps in a big mixed pile.

More likely to work better, not get smelly, and will give you a better finished product.

bird dog · Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:32 am

I recently had a pile cooking with to much green, really bad smell. As it is summer without many brown sources (leaves) I went and bought a bale of wheat straw for $5. I layered that in and began turning every three days. It took care of the bad oder and is now almost done with some very good looking compost.

cynthia_h · Sat Jul 23, 2011 1:05 pm

The 10% rule is a good guideline, but occasionally we receive a great bounty, like the fish the OP is discussing. It would be sad for him to deny his compost bin the intense nutritional value of the fish.

Just balance 'em out with browns! That's going to be some knock-down, drag-out, incredible compost!

Cynthia

rainbowgardener · Sun Jul 24, 2011 7:19 am

Yeah, cynthia, I didn't mean to imply OP should stick tight to 10% guideline (there are no "RULES" in composting), just using that as an illustration that more diversity is better, and the more different things he can incorporate in with the fish parts, the better final product is likely to be.

But yes, agree with everything that most important will be a bunch of "browns." Every fall I bring home a bunch of bags of leaves that people put out. When the fall leaves ran out last year, I bought a bale of straw to keep having a ready source of brown and for mulching with. The straw didn't break down quite as easily as the leaves. This spring I still had straw left in the compost pile and mulched beds. But once it warmed up, the left over straw disappeared pretty quickly.

bogydave · Sun Jul 24, 2011 2:37 pm

Without measuring, I'm guessing I have 80 - 90% HM compost & the rest is fish remains.
Yesterday there was an odor but not a "puke making" odor yet.
I wish I had a way to grind all the bones heads etc & then mix in with compost but MN is going to have to do the grinding over a year or 2.

toxcrusadr · Mon Jul 25, 2011 10:36 am

Adding the finished manure compost probably helped keep it from going incredibly stinky by absorbing some of the odor, but finished compost is not really a good ingredient. I second the recommendation on sawdust, leaves or shredded paper. It will make some dandy compost!

bogydave · Mon Jul 25, 2011 2:13 pm

Will be cutting fire wood, may I can add some chain saw chips to the mix.
Not gonna mix it though, just dump on top & leave it do it's thing. Saw some "juice" running out the bottom. I may have tackled more than I bargained for.

toxcrusadr · Mon Jul 25, 2011 4:04 pm

Keep us posted on it as it goes along, how long it takes for the Haz Mat team to arrive, etc.

For future reference, it might be better to post the question "Do you have any idea if this will work?" *before* you take the plunge.

cynthia_h · Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:32 pm

It'll work fine. The pile just needs a good "stirring." Esp. with those chips in the mix!

Cynthia

gixxerific · Mon Jul 25, 2011 9:28 pm

Not sue if it has been said but bury those below the browns.

Oh and I hope you like birds.

And stinky compost.

pickupguy07 · Tue Jul 26, 2011 9:24 am

cynthia_h wrote:It'll work fine. The pile just needs a good "stirring." Esp. with those chips in the mix!

Cynthia

THIS Is the part I'd hate to do.... eeeewwwww
Make sure and get your browns added all at once.. so you don't have to stir twice... (double eeewww)

bogydave · Tue Jul 26, 2011 10:59 pm

So far so good. I did it in layers about 6" of HM compost & about 20 fish heads & stuff. Then I covered it so everything is covered on top. I noticed a head sticking out the side where some flies were swarming but the odor so far is just mildly pungent, I mean you can tell something is rotten but not so bad you wince your nose.

I hear you about the mixing, not gonna happen for a while. I'll totally cover it with plastic, before I do any mixing if it gets real smelly.

I do wonder if the bones will break down & add calcium to the soil. I know the do along the salmon streams, not be many left, just a few jaw bones in the spring. I know salmon bones when pressure cooked get soft as we eat them in the canned salmon.

toxcrusadr · Wed Jul 27, 2011 10:23 am

Sounds like you're getting away with it! Yeah, the bones will probably go away in there. If it's cooking hot, it may dry itself out from the inside (esp. if you aren't getting rain) so keep an eye on the moisture level.

Nature's Babe · Wed Jul 27, 2011 3:33 pm

I regularly beg a bag of fish trimmings from our local independent supermarket, its free, and I incorporate it into the heap layering between browns greens and kitchen waste covering with some soil if there is a lot seems to stop any smell, all the components of the soil food web have different food requirements, so variety is good.

PS Take care with grubbing around in the soil though some large sharp fish bones can survive composting, and it can be painful to meet them unexpectedly later, so if you have the facility to grind them up it's a good idea

bogydave · Thu Jul 28, 2011 1:32 am

Grinding would be nice, maybe I'll eventually get a brush shredder & can run
it thru something like that.
The birds (magpies) found it yesterday, maybe they were eating maggots but they made a mess on top layer. I shoveled it all back in, smell not bad but the hundreds maggots made me wonder if it's going to work.
Then covered it with 2 layers of plastic. it can still get some air.
It has shrunk quit a bit.
I think I need to improve some parts of it for years fish carcasses.
I do like the grinding idea, will think on that one.
Didn't touch it to see if it was getting hot.

rainbowgardener · Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:16 am

If it were really heating up, you wouldn't have to touch it to know that. Just being near it, you would feel that. If it were max heating up, it would be giving off steam if you opened up the pile a bit.