Vermicomposting and pets: what precautions should you take?

Having a cat or a dog and a worm composter at home is not a problem at all: they get along just fine, with one precaution. This guide covers everyday life with your pets — to find out what you can and can't put in your worm composter (used cat litter, pet waste...), head over to our guide What do earthworms eat?

The only real risk: your cat and the worm composter

If you have a cat, one rule comes before all others: never let it use your worm composter as a litter box. Besides the smell of urine, which would quickly become hard to live with, cat waste poses a real health risk — we explain why in our guide on what worms eat, since the temperature inside a home worm bin isn't high enough to neutralize this risk.

The solution is simple: choose a spot your cat just can't get to, or a model whose lid always stays securely clipped shut. We go over the different possible locations in our guide Where to put your worm composter

Willy's tip

A curious cat soon loses interest in a lid that doesn't open easily. A securely closed worm composter, placed in a room your cat has limited access to (laundry room, basement, garage...), is enough in the vast majority of cases to rule out any risk.

Also think about the food scrap container in your kitchen, especially if you follow our compost pail tip for a worm composter set up far from the kitchen: it's best to keep it closed or out of reach, so a hungry cat doesn't help itself to your peels before they even make it to your worms.

What about your dog?

The risk is much lower: dogs don't have the same instinct as cats to use a container as a litter box. If yours is the curious, nosy type, the same precaution still applies, just to be safe: keep the worm composter out of reach or in a closed room, so your dog doesn't dig through the trays or snack straight from them. Besides, a well-balanced worm bin has nothing appealing about it compared with an ordinary trash can: at most a faint forest-floor smell, far less tempting for an inquisitive dog.

And rest assured: composting worms themselves are perfectly harmless if your pet happens to eat one out of curiosity. They're even used commercially as a protein supplement in some pet foods.

Is vermicompost safe for your pets in the yard?

Once harvested, vermicompost is a completely natural fertilizer with no chemicals at all — nothing like some garden fertilizers or treatments that need to be kept away from your pets. You can spread it in your garden or window boxes without any particular worry about a cat or dog wandering through. The same goes for worm tea, once diluted for watering: it's a natural product with no chemical additives that poses no particular danger to your pets. We explain how to harvest and use these two fertilizers in our guide Harvesting vermicompost and worm tea

The bottom line

Worm composters and pets get along very well, with just one real precaution: never let your cat use it as a litter box, for your own comfort and for everyone's safety. A well-chosen location and a lid that closes properly are enough, in the vast majority of cases, to rule out any risk — for your pets and your worms alike.

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