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| Hey,
I hate throwing stuff away, even bones, so I was wondering...I have a heavy-duty wood chipper. If I were to run the bones from mealtime through it (pork, chicken, etc), would I have bone meal? Or is bone meal something more than ground-up bones? Thanks
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Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by mountain_curmudgeon 4a (My Page) on Mon, Jan 23, 06 at 18:11
| More powdered than ground-up. After running them through a chipper, you'll have to grind them like flour to gain any short term benefit from them, in my opinion. Bones take a long time to decompose. Think dinosaurs. |
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| actually bonemeal is made using a steaming process that includes caustic soda, also part of the process of rendering slaughterhouse wastes like making animal glue - an industrial process, not just grinding up Bill |
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| From experience, I find that bones WILL decompose quickly. In the past 30 years or so, my gardens have consumed over 100 deer rib cages. They hang all winter for the birds to pick clean. (Five hanging in the lilacs right now!) They are run through a shredder or bagging mower a few times and composted, originally in a pile but a tumbler the past 9 years. You'd think that my garden would be white with bits of bone by now but it isn't. 43 years worth of chicken, turkey, squirrel, rabbit, 'coon, 'possum, pigeons, pig, cow, and any other edible critter's bones have all gone back to the ground. The only thing that shows up now and then are round steak bones. Otherwise everything vanishes in a few years as long as the stuff is in small bits. I've even smashed deer leg bones into small pieces with a hatchet and composted them. The slightly acidic soil takes care of them in the end. Martin |
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- Posted by southerngurl 6 Ark (My Page) on Tue, Jan 24, 06 at 20:32
| Speaking of bone meal, my dog just ate like 2 lbs of it. I called the company and they said it would be ok, just might constipate her. |
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| I make my bone meal out of chicken bones. After a chicken dinner I will boil the bones to remove any leftover fat or meat, which goes to my dog. Then I put the bones on my gas grill and basically turn them into charcoal. Once they are done I use an old coffee bean grinder and turn them into powder. The powder is of course black instead of the white stuff you buy in a bag. My tomatoes and potatoes love it and produce muchos fruitos!!! |
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- Posted by veggiecanner Id 5/6 (My Page) on Mon, Oct 8, 07 at 15:36
| All our bones are burnt in the wood furnace. Then they go out with the wood ashes and are spread on the snow all winter. |
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| Not quite on target, but ... I have a heavy duty "blender" - a VitaMixer, actually. It can pulverize bones - I've used it on chicken and turkey bones aplenty, though I haven't tried it on beef bones. I figure pulverizing the bones in water = bone meal soup. I put it in my compost, since it's mixed in with leftover bits of meat and fat and marrow, and it heats up the compost very nicely, but I could also put it under plants that like bone meal, I guess. |
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| I'm with veggiecanner. After we have made stock with our meat bones (which you all do, I assume) we put the bones on our log fire. When we empty the grate we crush any bones that have held their shape by hand. Then the bones and wood-ash go on the compost heap. It's truly said that if you aren't recycling your'e throwing it all away. Regards, Peter. |
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| So would it be a better choice to burn the bones or bake them? Would any bones do? |
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| idogcow: we make our own bonemeal by throwing bones on the fire back. All the bones from the meat we eat, from leg of lamb to ox tail, are simmered all day to make stock. Then, in the winter only of course, the bones are burned. When we take the wood ash from the fireplace in spring, any bones that haven't disintegrated are easily crushed by hand. So the bonemeal goes onto the compost pile or the soil with the wood ash -- progressively and in small quantities of course. This may be a problem for people with high pH, because wood ash tends to send it higher. But I like the idea because I regard anything that only provides one use as second class. Regards, Peter. |
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| Peter, so do you actually store the bones and use it for fireplace fuel in the winter? |
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| OK - for all you bone burners - what does that smell like? I live in the city, and my neighbors would have a fit if they smelled burning bone - how bad is it? I would love to be able to do this, but only if it won't offend the neighbors. Thanks, |
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| "I regard anything that only provides one use as second class." Well said, Peter, I'll be sure to repeat it. |
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| So I decided to make some of my own bone meal. I baked some chicken and pork bones on 400 for an hour and half until most of it became charred (quite smoky though). Then I crushed it in a mortar and pestle, which was surprisingly easy to do. Afterwards, I decided to rinse the crushed bones with water. The liquid that came out was a bright orange yellow, almost like urine. Does anyone know what this liquid is composed of? |
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- Posted by californian 10 (My Page) on Sat, Mar 14, 09 at 14:53
| If you ran your oven for an hour and a half to make a small quantity of bone meal you did more harm to the environment than good. I can see throwing the bones in a fireplace where you would be making a fire anyway, but to use an oven seems very wasteful. |
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| I made quite a large batch of bones, so hopefully it isn't that bad. Also I figured electricity is pretty efficient compared to fire and the heat of the oven is insulated so not much energy has to be consumed |
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| takadi: about burning bones on the fire, I should explain that we leave the ashes in the grate all winter (this is to reduce the draft and slow down burning) and clear them out in the spring. Regards, Peter. |
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- Posted by organicguy (My Page) on Sat, Mar 14, 09 at 18:34
| I don't know if burning the bones, or baking them at high heat will change the available nurtient content or not, you will be hard pressed to make enough to do a lot of good for your garden. If you don't want to waste them, I would suggest letting them dry in the son for a few week, break them up as best you can and throw them into the garden. Let nature take it's course. Ron |
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| I'm not a major meat eater. But I've been burying chicken and turkey bones in my garden, about 12 inches under, and they seem to disappear within 6 months. |
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- Posted by yukkuri_kame 10 (My Page) on Sat, Jul 17, 10 at 16:12
| I have always wondered about this topic. Thanks for all the ideas. As for simply burying bones in the garden, I figure that slow composting is not necessarily a negative. Remember a story about a permaculturist who added a huge batch of some sort of sea shells to a field. An old farmer laughed at him, saying the shells wouldn't break down for 100 years. The permie thought, "Great! I'll have minerals for the next 100 years!" Just a different mindset. |
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| I just dig a hole in the garden and bury the bones after the dog cleans them. Eventually they break down. I'm too old to be in a hurry. |
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- Posted by phytolacca (My Page) on Sun, Jul 18, 10 at 23:30
| "I don't know if burning the bones, or baking them at high heat will change the available nurtient content or not," It will. Bones have quite a lot of nitrogen in the protein that acts as "rebar" in the mineral matrix. Charring the bones burns the protein and releases the nitrogen to the atmosphere if taken too far. |
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| >actually bonemeal is made using a steaming process that >includes caustic soda, also part of the process of >rendering slaughterhouse wastes like making animal glue - >an industrial process, not just grinding up >Bill I'm old enough to remember when bone meal was made of ground bones right from the packing plant without any cleaning or steaming. It was terrific stuff but OMG did it stink. |
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- Posted by jimwoodman none (My Page) on Mon, Apr 30, 12 at 1:58
| Is it OK to get bone meal from my butcher? thanks |
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| Hey everyone, I read this thread and was very intrigued, if you're looking for bone meal for your outside garden burying the small (or broken up) bones is best without burning. The process of burning the bones is like what Phytolacca posted. Fire usually breaks apart molecules and proteins. On the note of the whole forum, which has kind of been askew, is that you should dry the animal bones out either via sun or just hung up, if you wanna throw some extra heat (by putting them next to the wood stove for example) should be fine. After that you can break up the bones into a powder with a mortar and pestle, or whatever way you like, but the more its broken down the better it will be. If you're into indoor gardening or container gardening you want this to be as fine as possible so the plants can access the nutrients. Other than that you could put into compost as well. Something to add as well, would you be able to dry and store the blood of the meat to make blood meal? I'm assuming blood meal is just dried blood. but if you were to mix your powdered blood and bone meal together you'de have a nice fertilizer of like 12-12-1 add that with some vermicompost or compost and you're plants will probably love it, of course to harvest that much blood and bone is a lot of meat so if you wanna make your own stick with organically raised chickens, plus eggs and eggshells and all that jazz. Sorry if i threw things off a bit. have a great one. |
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