I would have liked to have gone along to this meeting but alas too far for me to travel , listen to what this farmer has done for over 5 years on his property .
https://www.facebook.com/biocharfest/videos/vb.1430869343847227/1815618485372309/?type=2&theater
Thank you for posting this. Years ago I read about when they first tried raising cows in Australia. The manure stacked up in the fields and became a problem. They did a study and concluded that in other countries the manure had Beatles that ate and worked on the manure. So they imported some Beatles and sure enough the manure started disappearing from, the fields. I have been around cows, but I have never seen a dung beatle. Have any of you? TomC
Oh yes those litle beasts are quite interasting, rolling those marbles of poop 
althug our ure much smaller thain most, about the size of potato bugs.
In order for this process to be used in actual farming, it would take a LOT of bio-char. What industries would have bio-char as a byproduct, where the farmers could buy it. He said they get theirs from a company that produces bio-char to mix with silicon for something. I read where one ânutâ farmer, makes bio-char from the shells of the nuts, for his own use. Any ideas? TomC
Hi Tom , the guy doing the talking is a actual farmer and so is showing the results from his experiments , the amount of bio char he was talking about for each head of cattle was pretty small only a few hundred grams a day each . i think the reason he was buying large truck loads of the bio char was because he was doing projects with a lot of his neighbors as well as universityâs and at $100 a tonn that is cheap feed and land fill in his book .
I imagine someone like MR W.K with his farm or most other land owner farmers would have room for a burn cone to throw his off cuts into so as to make some extra feed for his cattle or to richen his pastures .
D&B; I took it he is feeding straight charcoal to the cows. He showed a 40 gal. tub he said contained charcoal mixed with molasses and showed the cows eating out of it. He said he no-longer feeds the cows any hay. I think he said the dairy farmer is just top dressing the feed with charcoal.
Makes me wonder what it would do for/to us humans. Kristajian, do you have any thoughts. TomC
Tom, I know an old women(95yrs.) she has been eating a burnt piece of toast once a week since a little girl,her Grandma, and mother did also. She says itâs good for your stomach ???
I think what the gentleman in the video is doing is a amazeing mix of natural phenomenoms, science and benefit.
The idea of feeding charcoal to cows occured to me a while back too, but didnt find enough courage to try it. Wuldnt like to hurt any animals but seeing this video l will definitly reconsider.
The idea occured to me while watching one of Garry Gilmores videos, when he mentioned he puts charcoal in the pony stable so that they work it in the dung and make good fertiliser.
I allso saw a video of growing plants directly in sun dryed rehidrated cow dung. Now, that seemd to work great for them. If there were charcoal in it too, shuld be eaven better.
Charcoal and soot was long being a remidy for cattle here, in cases of diharea. But l was wondering what a long term char diet wuld do, this video shows some great promise.
We do not pasture our cows (yet) and our pastures are quite fertile, but it is the charcoal compost fertiliser l aminterasted in. First, for our gardens/fealds, and second, biochar stuff sells for crazy money here. A pound of inoculated biochar cost 27$ last year at a local gardening center.
As for human consumption, l watched a video of a guy teaching people how to make biochar. He sayd, in order to determin the product is 100% biochar, thebest method is to chew a peace. It shuld taste like nothing.
I dubt it wuld do any harm to a human body in small cmquantitys.
Is reminds me of when I was young, when one of us got something like the ââflueââ, gram would burn a piece of bread/toast. With a knife, she scraped the burnt part into a glass of water and added o little sugar. After drinking, the problem was gone. Iâve seen the video where the instructor took a bite of the charcoal he had made. TomC
I am told that they also use activated charcoal for helping soak up toxins and the like from over doses in hospitals , I have also eaten charcoal when I have had a bad case of wind or bad gut seems to have an effect but Iâm no scientist , and yes Kristijan you are correct just look on ebay and see how much they try selling the poshed up packaged litre of charcoal fines ( wooops) I mean biochar for , one of the best uses for charcoal is for tooth paste , my mate Brian used to have yellow smokers teeth and now he just has off white falling out teeth you would never know he had smoked a ciggy at all 
Dave
Charcoal goes down well. I havenât had the time to make charcoal this year but was thinking about making a pot full for snacks. Better than junk food. Wash it down with a nice class of distilled water ! 
Not quite the topic of driving on wood unless you are using the cattle for draft animals, but since it involves charcoal, I have to chime in. A friend of mine has his farm set up for rotational grazing. He accepts a tractor trailer load of young cattle in May, moves them each day through a paddock until they have made three trips around the farm. In late September, the trailer comes back, the cattle are loaded up and he is paid for the amount of weight they have gained. Several years ago I was looking at a timber stand improvement he did and commented on what excellent material the cut trees would make for charcoal. I also mentioned an article I read about biochar and cattle farming. Also in the back of my mind was the observation Wayne shared on how cattle eat any charcoal he drops in the pasture when cleaning out his truck. In a nut shell, this guy now gives these cattle a pile (bushel or two) of charcoal each day he moves them. This is free choice and nothing added except some water used to quench it. In the three years of doing this he has noticed five things. 1. the cattle use half of the minerals they once used when given the chance to eat charcoal. 2. Mortality is next to zero. These cattle are bought at acution and not in the best of health. Before charcoal, he would loose several each year. 3. Healthier cattle. shiney coat, better filled out, faster weight gain. 4. Little if any panting Charcoal adsorbs ammonia and reduces acidosis. 5. Manure is black, little if any odor.
I hope to work with a few more farmers who do rotational grazing to see if these results can be repeated. If so, the next question is the economics of producing and offering charcoal to the cattle.
Thanks for posting the video of the Aussie using charcoal.
Gary in PA
Opps! I was thinking all night how I could add charcoal to my diet â sure donât need anything that puts more weight on me. Seriously, I like the idea of eating burnt toast, but it smells up the house when making it. After remembering how we took it as a medicine I am serious about eating it. TomC
Tom! Make sure you sift the nails outof your charcoal
We have been using a little wood fired pizza oven called the Uuni 3. https://uuni.net In ten minutes, it can reach temperatures of 932 F. Using a dual beam laser thermometer, we insert the Pizza when the temperature of the pizza stone reaches 750 F. 30 seconds, then open the door, turn the pizza, and 30 seconds more and it is done. Get distracted for a few seconds and part of the crust turns to CHARCOAL. We eat it and love it! We make a batch of pizza dough a day ahead, and let it ferment in the refrigerator, and usually make six at a time. One or two of them might have some black spots. Sometimes I make a dozen Naan. (Yep, some have a bit of burnt to eat.) Last weekend we made 14 Swedish TunnbrĆd. One of them had some charcoal on the edge. This is the best way to eat charcoal!
Love it ! Christmas ham with some mustard on, rolled in a tunnbrödâŠmmmm⊠Sweat an sour raw herring in a tunnbröd even betterâŠhot dog and mushed potatoes in a tunnbröd you can buy in hamburger restaurants. Beats McDonalds
Uuni = oven in the finnish language.
I was at a urine diversion summit last week in Vermont. I met a guy there who showed me some lab produced charcoal made from corn cobs. He opened the plastic bag to show me. He gave me a really strange/confused look when I picked up a piece, popped it in my mouth, chewed and swallowed.
A little iron added is also good.
Hey Bruce, The guy probably looked at you like that because he had used that corn cob charcoal to adsorb some urine; and before he could tell you that you snitched a bite!!! At that point he figured it best to just be quiet. I just attended a agricultural fair and one of the displays was a 5 gallon bucket half full of charcoal. And the charcoal was charged withâŠurine. Hope no one took a lick 