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Now that we are producing our own chicken meat we are about to get a considerable amount of carcasses to get rid of. We don't have a "dustman" call and our green cone is starting to get worryingly full, so I hit upon the idea of trying to process it all into bone meal, which turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be.
All the bones were first boiled up for stock and all the meat scraps picked off for the dog, then they were put in an old baking tray and put in the oven. Then every time that the oven was used for it's intended purpose the bones got a baking too. I think it only took a couple of casserole type baking sessions to make the bones very brittle at which point the went through an old cast iron mincer that we keep for processing egg shells.
The result was a very fine dark brown powder with no nasty shards, which pleased me no end, and has now turned something that would have become a bit of an embarrassment into a very useful fertilizer.

Next job is to work out what to do with the feathers

Pillows?

Keep the feathers until spring then hang up in a wide mesh bag for nesting birds to take (the smaller fluffier downy ones though rather than the big ones).

Well done on finding a use for your carcasses - now I expect to hear some scientific experiments with home made bonemeal vs. commercially produced.....

Also, did you work out how to produce dried blood?

The feathers might become a bit of a problem although I can always burn them, but it would be nice to find a more useful solution.
Between now and the end of the year I will have dispatched 30 chicken and that's a lot of feathers to dispose of. I know you can in theory compost them, but they have to be cut up into very small pieces and I can't work out how to do that. I have a shredder and a chipper and neither of those would deal with feathers.
The down would be OK as it is I suppose, but it would be a job to separate from the quill feathers when they're all a wet mass.

Will have to give it more thought.

Millymollymandy wrote:Also, did you work out how to produce dried blood?

Hair dryer ?

That sounds interesting Tony. Sorry I've no suggestions about the feathers other than stuffing something with them. What I am wondering though, is about the Fish Blood and Bone fertilizer. If you're now producing the bone, and you're going to hair dry some blood , what about the fish? I'm wondering which bit of the fish is used? Any ideas? Is it fish bones? Or fish faces? Or fish fingers?

http://www.greenfudge.org/2010/06/21/sc ... -feathers/

You can turn your feathers, blood and guts into bio diesel and hurricane resistant roofing apparently.

I wonder if you could use the feathers as a kind of mulch around plants? They'd probably fly about and make a mess unless they could be weighted down with something, or pushed under larger shrubs.

If you dry the blood, you need to make sure you heat it up enough to destroy any nasty bacteria. Could you pop it in the microwave? Or put it in the oven with the bones? I would imagine it would be difficult to scrape the dried blood out of the bowl unless you mixed it with something - the minced bones maybe?

Zoe

Ever thought of going into the feather duster business? Just don't do Ken Dodd impressions or the taxman might have a thing to say about it.

The small soft feathers can be used to stuff pillows, cushions, soft toys, could use a layer of them inside a quilt, removable seat covers, soft cat and dog beds, stuffing for earmuffs or anything else that needs a bit of padding.

The bigger feathers, depending on how pretty they are, can be used for hair fascinators, jewellery and hat or bag decorations. If you can paint there is also feather art, like this- http://inventorspot.com/articles/hair_a ... oots_17214 and http://busylizzyseasle.blogspot.com/200 ... thers.html

Or if you like modelling you could use them to create stranger things like this- http://theartobject.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... llock.html obviously that's from a peacock not a chicken, but you get the idea.

Presuming you don't have a dog, bone meal a no go as the dogs make themselves sick on it.

Sue

Funny but it's the bones that keep the graveyards going so well. Bodies are very good for enriching the soil and take a long time to rot down.

We just wrap the bones in newspaper and throw them in the fire part of the stove. They get tipped onto the soil with the ash. Areas of the garden with bonemeal, ash and manure survive summer droughts much better than parts with only manure and ash.

Clever stuff, all. I'm really impressed.

Curious though that bones can be burned so extensively and still be nutritious for plants. Probably best nobody tries to explain this, to me anyway, I know I'll struggle.

I had an idea a couple of years ago that has yet to be researched/tested. Knowing that fish is good and also bones I collected up a bagfull of cuttlefish bones off the beach. Sometimes there is a line of them left on the beach at high tide mark. I know that people give them to budgies to peck at so I suppose they might be good for chickens? I haven't got any chickens (sadly) but would they be good in the garden. My guess is that they would but not sure what plants they would be good for and also they are hard as a rock. I was going to bash them with a rolling pin in a pillow case but thus far they are still at the bottom of the garden in a placcy bag

Any ideas/suggestions welcome.

contadina wrote: Areas of the garden with bonemeal, ash and manure survive summer droughts much better than parts with only manure and ash.

Not that's interesting: I wonder why? It's not as if bone meal acts like a sponge or anything. I shall have to think about this

contadina wrote:We just wrap the bones in newspaper and throw them in the fire part of the stove.

We do that for the odd bone or two in winter, but my original problem was what to do with multiple carcasses and as we only fatten our chicken during the warmer summer months, burning them was not the answer.
It continues to work well and I now have a plentiful supply of free bone meal.