Mizzou Researchers Help Farmers Prevent and Manage Livestock Losses

By Brian Consiglio

Farmers handle a wide range of responsibilities to keep operations running — and a routine but often overlooked duty is safely disposing of dead livestock. Left unattended, carcasses can spread disease and jeopardize entire herds or flocks.

To help farmers manage the risk, University of Missouri researchers have been traveling the state, leading workshops on proper and safe composting methods. These trainings also informed a recent study showing that measured amounts of wood chips, sawdust and old compost help carcasses decompose safely while preventing the spread of disease.

“Whether it’s avian influenza or any number of disease outbreaks that can quickly wipe out thousands of farm animals, we ultimately want to help farmers improve their biosecurity practices so disease outbreaks don’t happen in the first place,” Teng-Teeh Lim, extension professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. said. “In the past, a dead animal might just get thrown into the woods so nature could take care of it. But if that animal was diseased, that’s exactly how disease can spread.”