Can you burry chickens in your garden?

[SongBaby33]

Hi everyone I wondered if it was against the rules to burry dead chickens in your garden!
I have always burried my chickens that have died in my garden.

 

[SongBaby33]

@EggSighted4Life

 

[Criticalicious]

Whose rules? I don't see why this would be against any rules, although some people believe it's a waste of good meat. I can completely understand not wanting to eat one's pets. The only complication I can see might be if they had ingested something toxic that you don't want to put in the groundwater.

 

[nchls school]

I know of no rule. When I have a bird die and don't know why I burn the corpse in case of disease.

 

[SongBaby33]

It's just I read somewhere that you couldn't burry them in the garden because it made the ground toxic or something

 

[Kris5902]

I wouldn’t in a veggie garden for sure! Also I wouldn’t eat them unless I killed them myself. If your chicken just dies on it’s own I don’t think it’s human consumption edible because it hasn’t been properly bled. Buried deeply enough in and ornamental garden though I wouldn’t see as a problem.

 

[Criticalicious]

A bigger concern might be an animal digging it up to eat it, and if the chicken died from a communicable disease, now you're possibly spreading that to other animals.

 

[WunnySharbit]

I usually bury mine under one of our trees or shrubs. I don't like to accidentally find it later prepping the garden. There may be some city ordinance against it, but again, if the plants are using it, it won't "pollute"... Most of the ordinances I have researched have an upper size limit: goldfish, hamsters, cats-OK saint bernard, cow-not so much. Under the feathers, chix are usually smaller than a cat. I have read that a different set of organisms process meat and could cause issues if the rotten carcass is dug into, but I've not had that problem: it really doesn't take long for the plants/composters to deal with it.

 

[IamRainey]

A safer way to do it would be to add the corpse to a compost pile. If you do it I'd dig it in 3' or so so you don't have animals digging after it.

 

[Kris5902]

A bigger concern might be an animal digging it up to eat it, and if the chicken died from a communicable disease, now you're possibly spreading that to other animals.

If it’s an infectious poultry disease I’d think the other birds would already be exposed... always dig the hole two three times deeper than you think you need to, and I wouldn’t worry about anything that digs it up to eat it getting sick.

Most animals that eat carrion have digestive systems that are well adapted to that! Vultures and raccoons are nature’s way of limiting the spread of disease by eating the carcass in an efficient manner!