 Hi, I'm Mary Keena, Livestock Environmental Management Specialist with NDSU Extension. I want to start by saying that the NDSU Extension Livestock team recognizes the fact that this is a very difficult and stressful time for you as our producers. While dealing with a normal mortality is stressful enough, dealing with mass mortality on top of current weather conditions adds to that stress. If you need an ear to listen, please reach out to the statewide helpline by calling 2-1-1. This line is available for Health and Human Services information and referrals. The approved carcass disposal methods for North Dakota are rendering, incineration, burial, composting, landfilling, and in certain situations, burning. The law states that within 36 hours, carcasses need to be disposed of by an approved method. One method that is not approved and is not legal is carcass abandonment. So leaving that carcass where it's at, taking it to a rock pile or a section line is not an approved method of disposal. It is important to dispose of our livestock mortalities in a timely manner to reduce disease transmission as well as mitigate any odor issues that may be caused by mass mortality. We're going to talk about the three most effective carcass disposal options for producers, given the recent weather events, the time of year, and for time management purposes. Burial is going to be the first one. And so when we're burying, we're simply digging a hole and placing that carcass inside and covering it. A couple of things to keep in mind are site selection. So we want to make sure we're in a clay type soil to reduce leaching from the carcass. And we also want to make sure we're not in a floodplain. We want to make sure we're four feet above the groundwater table and that we're covering that carcass with four feet of cover material. Landfilling is the second option that's going to be simple for livestock producers depending on your proximity to one of the 13 municipal solid waste landfills in North Dakota. That list can be found in our resources. Keep in mind that individual landfills can accept or reject on their own terms. And so it's always best to call ahead and it's best to call ahead for protocol as well. Composting is going to be the third option that producers can do right now. So an option that can be done on farm with the resources you have and essentially it's like above ground burial. So the process for composting is we start with a two foot base of carbon material. That two foot base can consist of straw, corn stocks, old hay. We just need something that's coarser on the bottom and two feet of it so that we can allow air flow from the bottom up like a chimney effect. Next we lay the carcass on top of that base. And so if it's a mature animal like a cow bull horse, we want to make sure that we're only putting one carcass on that pile. We can also make a windrow of the carbon base if we have several livestock mortalities. If the animal is smaller and so we say if you can lift it, you can stack it. So while we would put a bigger mature animal singly, we would not stack that. We can stack smaller animals. Anything that you can lift by hand and place on the pile can be stacked. And so in that instance, we would do two foot of carbon base. Then we would put our smaller carcasses that we can lift and stack by hand on the carbon base. We would put a bulking material between that. And then we will put our carcasses on top of that bulking material before we put our top cover on. The third step in the process is going to be covering that carcass with bulking material. And so the bulking material we're going to use 8 to 10 inches of it can be manure, spoiled silage, distillers grains, anything that has a starter culture in it is going to help that process go a little faster. And so again, we use about 8 to 10 inches of that. And then our fourth and final step is going to be capping that compost row or pile. And so we're going to use about two feet of carbon material again on the top. On the top, we want to avoid using corn stalks as their two course. For the top, we would want to use old hay straw or chopped straw, something that's going to keep the heat in, also keep the odors in and in turn keep the critters away. So as a quick review, if we're going to compost livestock mortalities, let's start with a really good two foot carbon base. We're going to put that carcass on top, making sure that nothing is sticking out. We're going to cover it with 8 to 10 inches of bulking material. And then we're going to cap it with another two feet of carbon material and a denser carbon material on top. If you have questions about disposing of dead livestock, you can always reach out to me or you can reach out to your local extension agent with any questions that you have.