Raising Cornish Rocks on Bone and Ash

[greyfields]

I get the bonemeal by the 50#. I have options of steamed or raw from what I recall. And there is also a powder form.

 

[Omniskies]

Alright, I may have to give up on bone meal. The book I read was written in the early 1900s, which is tragically before the whole Mad Cow scare. I found this information on Wikipedia:

Bone meal once was often used as a human dietary calcium supplement. Research in the 1980s found that many bone meal preparations were contaminated with lead and other toxic metals, and it is no longer recommended as a calcium source.

In the 1990s, bone meal was identified as a vector for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow disease") among livestock. It is believed by some that bone meal produced in the 1970s from the corpses of sheep bearing scrapie caused BSE in cattle when it was fed to them, but the pathogen very rarely crosses species, so it is more likely to have spread from cow bonemeal. Others believe that organophosphates may have triggered the bovine form of the disease.

Then about blood meal I found this:

Blood meal is dried, powdered blood used as a high-nitrogen fertilizer. It is one of the highest non-synthetic sources of nitrogen and if over-applied it can burn plants with excessive ammonia. Blood meal is completely soluble and can be mixed with water to be used as a liquid fertilizer. It usually comes from cattle as a slaughterhouse by-product. It can be spread on gardens to deter animals such as rabbits,[1][2] or as a compost activator. It may also be used as an animal food supplement.[3]

Blood meal, bone meal, and other animal by-products are permitted in certified organic production as soil amendments, though they cannot be fed to organic livestock. In the United States, fear of BSE (mad cow disease) and the related Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease prompted Demeter International, which certifies biodynamic farms, to fully prohibit use of bone meal and blood meal, since these could be routes of infection for BSE.

Blood meal is different from bone meal in that blood meal contains a much higher amount of nitrogen, while bone meal contains phosphorus.​

 

[willheveland]

Cool,I'm glad you posted the mad cow stuff.I was betting somebody wouldn't have believed me when I said it and I wouldn't have been able to explain it that well. Will