When you own a horse, you assume responsibility for their health and welfare.\u00a0 In some cases you could be faced with making a life-or-death decision about your horse.\u00a0 When the horse dies you need a plan.\u00a0 \u00a0And your plan may include composting, a natural rendering process.<\/p>\n
Static Pile Composting<\/strong> is pretty magical. The animal is enveloped in carbon-based material and left for months or years with no turning or work required.\u00a0 It\u2019s a safe and environmentally sound solution, and can be done at any time of year, using the kind of equipment found on most farms.\u00a0 Here’s how.<\/p>\n – It\u2019s a good idea to plan ahead.<\/p>\n Have some coarse woodchips, shavings, or other coarse carbon materials on hand, and choose the composting site.<\/p>\n \u2666 Select a site that is well drained, at least 200 feet from any water, including streams, creeks, sinkholes, seasonal seeps or other landscape features which indicate that the area is hydrologically sensitive.<\/p>\n \u2666 Create a 2\u2019 bed of bulky, absorbent carbonaceous material, like wood chips that have big pieces: 4-6 inches long.<\/p>\n Utility and municipal wood chips work well.<\/p>\n Make sure that the base is \u00a02 FEET HIGH AND big enough to allow for a 2-foot clearance around the entire carcass.<\/p>\n When the time comes\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2666 place the horse in the center of the bed.<\/p>\n When the horse is down, and before covering, lance the stomach to avoid bloating.<\/p>\n \u2666 Cover the carcass with 2-3 feet of carbon material.<\/p>\n Make sure that the whole animal is completely covered.<\/p>\n On this farm we used composted bedding, and covered it all with more wood chips.<\/p>\n This will keep odors under control, insulate the pile, and, keep vermin or unwanted animals out.<\/p>\n The pile will heat up and then gradually settle<\/p>\n as the micro-organisms managing this natural rendering process go to work.<\/p>\n The heat generated in the pile will deter scavengers and kill pathogens.<\/p>\n \u2666\u00a0 Don\u2019t move the pile for 6 months to a year.<\/p>\n After a full year, the composting process will be finished.<\/p>\n You can re-use the composted material for another pile.\u00a0\u00a0 The remaining bones will add bulk to the base of a new pile.<\/p>\n Years later, we used the finished compost to plant a tree!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Static Pile Composting is pretty magical. The animal is enveloped in carbon-based material and left for months or years with no turning or work required. It\u2019s a safe and environmentally sound solution, and can be done at any time of year, using the kind of equipment found on most farms. Here’s how.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-work-weve-done"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":572,"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electronranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}