Posted on 07/09/2022 4:54:22 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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“...was able to thoroughly irritate it:”
An angry 😠 garden is a productive garden!!
The road to our house - two more miles to go and you'll be there! The dead tree in the very center is the one we took out last week. That's our house yard. Will post pictures of that process. Cottonwood, a good 100' tall. Quite the project! The fields are planted in 'contours' to stop soil erosion. The lighter parts are recently baled oats for dairy cow winter feed. It'll grow back for another harvest or two, weather depending. The darker green is feed corn, also for the cows.
Sounds like you’ll have your hands full for a while! BUT - build the ‘bones’ of your garden first, and put the effort in where needed. THAT, you won’t regret. ;)
As a septic system owner myself, I feel your pain!
Does diphacinone (common type of 1st Gen rat poison) in an animal that has ingested it and died underground or been buried, break down in soil, and if so, how quickly?
I attempted to research this online and about the only definitive info. I could find was that:
A) Diphacinone is metabolized fairly slowly in the body of living warm blooded creatures.
B) Critters with blood with clotting properties, and might consume the dead animal, can ingest enough “second hand” diphacinone to be harmed or killed.
C) Insects & worms that consume the dead animal may temporarily show elevated levels of diphacinone but do not seem to be harmed (they are not dependent on “our” type blood clotting mechanisms) and apparently pass diphacinone through without significantly metabolizing it.
D) “No info” on decomposition by fungus, bacteria, etc., consuming the dead animal. I found “no info” on decomposition / degradation of diphacinone by soil bacteria and such, either.
E) DDT is more persistent (2-15 years half-life) in the environment than diphacinone, but no further data or specifics regarding diphacinone persistence was given.
I have a raccoon in a paw (dog proof) trap. I’m pretty sure it ALSO consumed quite a bit of rat poison B4 encountering the trap. Will have to shoot the ‘coon, of course, but, instead of cooking it & feeding it to our chickens, burying it SEEMS the best bet? Trash pickup is 5 days away, temps will be in the 90’s - not a good option...
The deer have been out and about a lot in our area recently. Unusually so, for July. Saw several in various spots as we were coming home around 7 pm last evening. Possibly it’s our near drought conditions (but some rain Sat. evening.)
I have no idea! Pinging others for help. I’m not in charge of Critter Trapping/Disposal around here. For all I know Beau takes them to another farm where they can live a happy life with other happy critters, LOL!
If you have a sawmill near you, get some sawdust, set racoon on the ground and then cover well. No odor and it will be nothing but bones in a couple of months. I did it with a goat once and there was nothing but bones left behind. No fur even. The ground was raised up where the goat’s organs would be. Microorganisms are amazing.
You could probably put a couple of inches of sawdust down first as a bed/base, then add coon, then cover. Wouldn’t hurt to wet the base layer. Microbial life needs water.
I gave our dog a proper burial but I wasn’t about to dig in this heavy, rocky soil for a goat. Sawdust worked great and since it had no odor, nothing bothered it. If you have an outdoor cat, they may use it as a litter box. You could lay some fence or poultry netting or even a tarp over it and weigh the edges down. I did the goat during the wet season. Since it’s summer, it probably wouldn’t hurt to wet all the sawdust down and put a tarp over it. Or at least all the sawdust in contact with the coon. Need a good home for the microbes. It is a compost pile after all.
Hi, thanks for the info.!
However, digging is not the problem here except for an occasional root. Deep sedimentary soil. (It will be hell next time the New Madrid Fault blows.)
We have lots of leaf litter and hickory nut shells to act as cover, too. You’re right about the decomposition of the bulk of organic matter, though. A 5’ high 15’ diameter pile of said litter and nuts is pretty well gone by the following early fall, if said pile is moist some of the time. :-)
The question is where does the diphacinone go and / or does it break down (microbes, chemical reaction w/ soil, etc. Don’t want to enter it into the food chain even at a very low level in the area of our garden if it sticks around long. Normally, the ‘coon would be fertilizer, if not food for the chickens. The garden and my adjacent fishing worm bed are our easiest places to dig, too, esp. this time of year. (Moist soil despite near-drought. The rest is heavy clay once one gets over 6” down.) But I could soak another area B4 Mr. Coon gets too fragrant... Assuming the diphacinone won’t “migrate” or stick around very long, that is.
Previously, I didn’t worry about it much with rats deep in their burrows, but I became more curious in this instance.
Diphacinone is rapidly decomposed in water by sunlight.
If it was in powder form, you could mix it in water and set it in the sun.
Decomposes at 338 °C (without boiling).
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=celsius+to+fahrenheit&ia=answer
640 Fahrenheit
Toss it on top of a big ole bonfire. If it was a powder form of Diphacinone, you could mix it in water and set it in the sun
Or just find somewhere to dump the coon and figure out a way to not use Diphacinone in the future or find an alternative poison.
That looks delicious!
(DS) = Direct Seed | (TP) = TransPlant. Technically, I'm late on a few things that get started indoors and transplanted. I'm not doing all that.
https://www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/calculator-planting-dates-fall-harvest-crops.html - xlsx - Excel spreadsheet file
Thanks for the reminder! I have to plant my Spring veggies this Fall because our Spring was ridiculously HOT.
Such a great tool! :)
The deer or the zucchini dish? If it’ the zucchini, I made it for supper last night and it was AWESOME! I’m going to make it again real soon! :)
Lol! The zucchini. I copied the recipe immediately! I can never get enough zucchini.
https://www.homesteadingtoday.com/threads/composting-dead-animals-in-sawdust.334013/
http://compost.css.cornell.edu/turkeys.html
homesteadingtoday
That’s where I got it from. forerunner, who has the first reply, started an Extreme Composting thread that became legendary. HomesteadingToday has been through the wringer and most sane people left. It’s a shame. Basically a bunch of leftist/activist types came in and started with their Critical Theory which is the mother of all critical ________ theory.
The site owner didn’t know how to handle moderation and fell prey to the criticizing part of critical theory. She sold the forum and it’s been sold again at least once. They’ve also swapped forum software multiple time. Now there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t work. Most older images are gone etc.
Damn shame. It was The Best and now is crap.
Permies.com has some good posts. A lot of people there who enjoy experimenting and report the results. Just avoid the political sections of the forum, there are a lot of leftists in those sections.
The garden has reached the stage that it's going to be difficult to keep up with production. Garlic has been harvested and hung in the potting shed to cure. Was a bumper crop this time. Enough to give half of it away and still last us until next summer.
I dug up a couple of the yukon gold potato plants a couple days ago. The spuds almost filled a two gallon bucket. If the rest of the row produces like that I'm going to have to figure out a place to store them. Mrs. Augie has been asking for a root cellar for awhile now. It might be a good time to build one.
We ate the first slicer tomato a few days ago. It was a nice fat black krim, and oh my did it ever taste good. All of the tomato plants that were in a funk from the wet weather in late May have recovered and look good. Two weeks from now we'll start harvesting some weight and with the hot peppers also coming on it will be time to fire up the salsa kitchen.
Mrs. Augie continues to produce her fermented pickles. She's well past two cases now and shows no sign of slowing down. The pole beans have started to produce. I've picked a few spaghetti squash and have more on the way. Butternut plants are loaded but the fruits need some more time to mature. Cabbages can come out any time. Beets came out yesterday, and I gave them a good boiling to slip the skins. They're getting made into beet pickles, which I'll finish up after I'm released from the salt mine later today.
After a summer of relative peace last year, the raccoon wars have started to heat back up. In the past three weeks we've lost six hens and two of Mrs. Augie's bird feeders have been destroyed, so I set the box trap Friday night and captured the gang leader. She had quite a nasty disposition, but we invited her to stay for supper anyway.
Nice pictures. We had a very good garlic crop too. Diana, on zucchini, I never grow it anymore. I only like it for zucchini bread (rarely), and bought small at the store, tossed in olive oil salt and pepper and grilled for just a few minutes. Sliced in half lengthwise. Shishito peppers growing. Picked one already, could have picked 4 this morning but it would be hasty they will get bigger. Plants are knee high and loaded with flowers. Been busy trying to find a water leak in our pipe down to the barn, I am too old for this!
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