Comparative Study of the Effectiveness of Effective Microorganisms and a Custom Inoculum in the Collective Composting of Companion Animals in La Calera, Colombia

Abstract

In Bogotá, funeral services for pets have been provided for 22 years; a single organization has an average of 30 services per day. Traditionally, burial and incineration have been used as methods of disposal of corpses, but due to its costs and health and environmental risks, composting has been increasingly used. The objective of this study, of which no other reports are found, was to compare the effectiveness of Efficient Microorganisms (EM) against an own inoculum (IP), and a Control (C), in the collective composting process of companion animals, in La Calera, Colombia. For two months of 2024, an experiment was carried out with two treatments: ME, IP and a Control (C) without inoculum, each with two replicates and a mixture of 750 kg of carcasses, 100 kg of chicken manure and 600 kg of husk, for a C/N ratio of 30, along with 1,500 L of water and 40 L of bio-inoculum. No significant differences were identified in temperature, relative humidity and pH, or in the results of the physicochemical and microbiological analyses of the two treatments and the composting control. at 58 days, but there is a significant difference in the degradation of the corpses, being higher in PI. Composting with IP presents superior results compared to composting with ME, and this compared to composting without microbial inoculums in different variables, although the findings are not conclusive.