Elizabeth, I use the 50-gallon gray-colored "Brute" heavy-duty plastic
trash cans made by Rubbermaid Co. They stand up to anything. I've tried
every other cheaper kind of garbage can, and they all split and leak
within one or two years; not worth the money.

I like trash cans over drums because trash cans have handles. However,
50-gallon plastic drums work too. In my local area we have a plant that
makes medical supplies, and they get some kind of special soap in
blue-colored drums. I go over there and if I only ask for one or two, they
give them away for free. One takes a knife or a small saw and cuts the top
off the drum. You don't need to cover the drums or trash cans anyway;
maggots are good friends when it comes to defleshing.

I do all my stuff as wet maceration, which stinks to high Heaven but you
can reduce that by using sewer system "bio-degrade" crystals. Also helps
if you have an air compressor that you can hook to a hose and run the hose
in to the bottom of the tank and then blow air in there to make it bubble
a while: aeration speeds up the process, just as turning your garden
compost pile does when doing dry composting.

If you do this inside, you will of course need to park your drums under a
vent hood with a fan that has a fair amount of suction. I do mine outside
in a special shed I built. My drums have dollies with wheels so they're
easy to move, the shed has doors with rubber seals so the stink doesn't go
out that way, the shed itself is built very tight and sealed, and so where
the methane goes is out a vent with a fan mounted in it, down a pipe, and
directly into the local sewer -- sweeeeet.

You will need two drums for a full-sized horse. Unless the animal is
smaller than about 14 hands/800 lbs., you will probably need to
disarticulate the ribs, because the distance from the sternum to the top
of the withers on a full-sized horse is larger than the diameter of a
50-gallon drum.

There is a handy technique for getting the ribs off: first strip off as
much flesh as possible, including particularly the intercostal
musculature. Then, select a rib about midway the thorax. Take a pair of
heavy-duty wire cutters or a fencing tool and use it to cut through the
costal cartilage below the end of the bony part of the rib. When the
distal end of the rib is free, grasp the rib with both hands so that your
palms are facing anteriorly and, using thumb pressure, push the rib as far
as possible anteriorly, in a kind of rolling motion. You'll hear the
capitular ligaments straining and/or breaking. If they don't break easily,
help them a little bit with a small knife with a flexible blade. This
"forward roll" technique makes quick work of getting all the ribs off.
More pressure is needed for the stouter anterior ones, but not hugely
more, so there's no need to break any bones at all.

You will also probably have to separate the neck at about C6-C7 or C5-C6,
and very likely also you'll be wanting to take the pelvis/sacrum off the
lumbar chain. When separating vertebrae, use a small knife with a longish,
flexible blade, something like a scaling knife like a fisherman would use.

So, by the time you put the thing in the cans, you have: head and part of
the neck (don't bother separating the jaws; it protects the hyoids
better); base of neck, thoracics and anterior lumbars; posterior lumbars,
pelvis, sacrum and tail; scapulas; femurs; gaskin, hock, hind cannon, hind
pasterns, and hind hoof; forearm, knee, fore cannon, fore pasterns, and
fore hoof; and a heap o' ribs. Be sure not to let the sesamoids at the
ankles or the patellas inadvertently go into the trash: I usually take
those off first, myself, so that no students get the blame if they don't
happen to show up at the other end of the process. I also leave the hoof
capsules on because that guarantees that the navicular bones don't get
lost. And I throw in the sternum and all the costal cartilages even though
they're at least partly cartilagenous, and even though the cartilages will
have been damaged by having been cut -- one thing we want to know these
days is the frequency of fractures/healed fractures to the costal
cartilages. And, if you ever want to make a mount out of the thing, you'll
need the sternum, not to mount it, but to use it to make a plastic copy of
the right size and shape for the particular horse. -- Cheers -- Dr. Deb




> Hi all.
>
> Have recently received a large, rather smelly, partially decomposed horse
> into our faunal collection. I am looking for equipment ideas that could
> process this size animal. Large water baths? or something similar.
>
> Any additional ideas and suggestions are welcome.
>
> Many thanks.
>
>
> Elizabeth R. Arnold, PhD
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 1158 Au Sable Hall
> Grand Valley State University
> Allendale, MI 49401
> U.S.A.
> Office: (616) 331 8936
> Fax: (616) 331 2328
>
> www.gvsu.edu/anthropology/
>
> GVSU celebrates 50 years of shaping lives
>
>