Kitchen Garden Forum

my son was given pigeon poo and was wondering if it was safe to use on allotment

Judging by the number of pigeons who've raided my greens on my vegetable patch, pooed on it over the years and I've subsequently eaten crops from it and survived, I'd say it was probably OK. I'm a great believer of "sniff and see". As we haven't really had a massive fatal epidemic of Avian Flu here, and pigeons only tend to eat vegetarian foodstuffs anyway, I can't see it would be harmful in small quantities.

Those with more wisdom than me on the subject may have contrary views. Are we talking here about concentrated poo collected from a pigeon loft? In such a case I imagine it's probably little different from chicken poo. Probably very strong and may need to rot down a while before using?

I used to get bags of it given to me by one of the plot holders who kept pigeons ( I could never understand why he did not use it himself ) I was desperate to get anything that would improve my soil as it was in a sorry state after 17 years of being used as a dump , I can't say it did any harm I used a fair bit of it in my pollytunnel and never had to feed the tomatoes or at least minimal feeding , but I also used chicken muck from my own chickens as well as cow and horse muck , the last delivery we had was from the council when they closed the kiddies zoo down which was in a local park the list of animals at the zoo was unbelievable but it was well rotted manure alas no more

This could be a hot potato of conflicting views

Personally I would not wish to use pigeon muck, not because of what it might do to the plants but more importantly what it might do to the user if spores got into someone's lungs.
Certainly would not even spread any volume of pigeon muck without a quality mask.

The spores within are lethal stuff.

I have a work colleague who for 9 months had a progressively worse cough and ended up struggling to breathe. We all feared the worst until she was diagnosed with "pigeon fanciers' lung" which she had developed from her pet cockatiel's cage! She's had the bird for 16 years but had been fine until a year ago.

Apparently the minute spores are in the air (and indeed all over the house, including the litter tray) but in fact initially come from the bird's feathers, you inhale them and then you get sick. She's now on steroids and improving rapidly, having had to rehome her bird.

I would imagine once composted it would be ok, but those spores will be around until then so I would wear a face mask when handling.

Around a year ago one of the lads was cleaning his pigeon sheds out I had around eight bags of muck from him most of it was old stuff nothing less than six months old I spread all of it around the plot about three bags went in the pollytunnel I have never heard of it making you poorly but I've never kept pigeons