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imagine, the dung loving bacteria and beneficial microbes that go dormant temporarily after pasteurization, are an extremely beneficial factor in poop, that other substrates do NOT provide(brf, coir, grain, etc)

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Yes, and likely poo is a good source of Nitrogen considering most vegetarian animals eat plant matter!

chobumms said:

Yes, and likely poo is a good source of Nitrogen considering most vegetarian animals eat plant matter!

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ManicMongrel said:

I dont think the nutritional profile of dung is very spectacular, its digested material after all.

For dung fungi it has some nice benefits over ordinary plant debris though. This is what I've picked up on the topic while randomly reading on the web, its pretty basic stuff and easy to find with some googling.

-First of all, its full of dead and dying bacterias which is a decent source of nitrogen- and precursor compounds.

-The animals own waste products are dumped with gall fluid, and provides more useful compounds.

-There is ample of cellulose fiber that is easier to break up and down because they are worked over by the animals digestive system and its bacterias. All the plant fibers probably has lots more surface area compared to non-digested material which makes it much more susceptible to the fungus' own enzymes. (This is one of the main challenges when making bio-fuel from cellulose today, it takes time to break up crystalline fences of cellulose. More surface area for the enzymes to work on speed up the process.)

-After pasteurization the endospores germinate and reestablish a bacterial culture, they produce some anti fungal compounds that keep mold at bay but, the dung fungi are highly resistant to these which is one of their main advantages. Its not unlikely that the there is symbiotic relationships between the dung fungi and some bacterias either.

-Dung probably doesn't have much easy available nutrients either, which makes it less appealing to more opportunistic microbes like molds, yeast and bacterias that typicaly spoil food.

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