Making Money With Cow Dung And Dung From Other Herbivores

For the most part, humans are omnivores. If you are not aware of what omnivores are, they are organisms that eat foods that are both of animal and plant origin. That is why humans are different from cows which are herbivores. This means that cows only eat food that are of plant origin.

As a result, cows and humans produce different kinds of organic waste. Human waste contains pathogenic organisms and heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, selenium and mercury.

These potentially dangerous substances are not found in cows and in other animals that are herbivores. This makes cow dung safer to handle and recycle that human waste. And many people know about this, especially people who raise cows for a living.

But this does not mean that cow dung is an essentially safe product to use or even consume. Cows are not intelligent animals and may eat unsafe materials. Garbage and other toxic substances have been found inside their stomach.

This makes some cows unsafe for human consumption including their excrement and urine which are consumed and used by some people in this planet. These people mostly come from the rural places of the world.

Many Indians are Hindus and consider cows as a sacred symbol of life that should be protected and revered. Harming and worse, even killing a cow especially for food is considered taboo by most Hindus.

But this does not mean that Hindus who compose 80% of the population in India don’t touch the waste of cows. On the contrary, Hindus and even many non-Hindus in India use cow dung and cow urine as some sort of herbal medicine as well as recycled product.

There have been cases of cow dung powder poisoning in India. Besides the excrement of unhealthy and poisoned cows, their milk and meat have also been toxic to people who eat them.

But this does not mean that all cows in rural areas are unsafe. As long as cows are fed a healthy and clean plant diet, they and their waste should be safe to consume and use.

At this point in the article I think I have strongly emphasized the danger of consuming and using unhealthy and sick cows. From hereon, the rest of this article would concentrate on ways of making money from cow dung.

Cow dung has been historically used in many rural areas as a source of cooking fuel. The reason is simple. Once dried under the sun, cow manure make excellent cooking fuel or firewood.

If you are a businessman in a rural area, you could make good money selling cow dung as cooking fuel. But I don’t think that cow dung as cooking fuel would be a sensible business in highly urbanized area.

For one, many people who live in highly urbanized area would likely gag at the sight of cow dung or any kind of manure. People in these areas are simply not used to seeing and smelling cow dung.

I remember seeing fresh cow dung in the road when I went to a rural area. While I almost gagged at the sight of fresh cow dung, the people who lived there did not care about the fresh cow dung.

This was because they were so used to seeing fresh cow dung. There were even workers who were cleaning the road of cow dung. They have cow dung in their rubber boots and pants but they didn’t seem to care.

Cow dung in its original shape make people remember their own excrement. This process is automatic in many people’s brains who are not used to seeing and touching cow dung. A businessman who can repackage the look of cow dung as a cooking fuel is sure to make money.

And this has been happening. Many enterprising individuals have been reshaping cow dung and even the dung of other herbivore animals into briquettes. They are even making them into charcoal briquettes in an effort to make them more palatable in the eyes of consumers.

I wouldn’t probably see cow dung charcoal briquettes in the shelves of supermarkets of developed countries. This is because developed countries have much stricter health regulations than developing countries.

But if you are from a developed country and let us say involved in the cow business. There may still be a way for you to make money with your cow dung. But not as cooking fuel, in fact it’s something similar to the original form of cow dung.

Many people know this already. Animal dung and even human dung is used as fertilizer. But don’t you know that cow dung as fertilizer could even be exported. According to the limited research I did about cow manure, it is not only bought by local people but even exported.

India and perhaps even other countries export cow dung to Maldives and even into such countries as Argentina, Australia and Malaysia, Mauritius and the United States. If even people in these cow exporting countries buy cow dung from India, the demand must be great.

This is the website of Infodrive India where I was able to have a glimpse of information on the worldwide trade for cow dung:

Online Article: Cow dung global export import data, buyers & suppliers

If you click on the above link, you would immediately come to the conclusion that there is an active trade in cow dung globally with India seeming to be a major player in the cow dung exporting business.

As you can see, you can make good money by being an importer or exporter of cow dung. You can for example be an Indian exporter of cow dung who has a customer from Australia who sells cow dung to Australian farmers as fertilizer.

Either way, being an importer or exporter of cow dung can be profitable for you. It is even better if you can export or import not only cow dung, but other animal dung as well.

It is simple to see why a country like India can have so many cows. As of last count in 2021, there are more than six million stray cows in India. This is because the killing of cows in India is taboo.

Does this mean that only India and its people can have a profitable cow dung fertilizer business just because they have so many stray cows? The answer is a resounding ‘No.’ If you own cows or have access to cow dung, you can still make money without exporting cow dung.

There are many farmers and garden owners in your own country who would buy your cow dung as manure from you. They are even being sold in many online e-commerce sites in all kinds of sizes. Cow manure now can be sold and bought from small bags to big sacks.

But let’s be honest here, unless you own a farm and live in an agricultural area, you probably won’t even own a single cow. But don’t be disheartened, there are also middlemen for cow dung.

As long as you have a bit of capital, you can become a middleman buying cow dung from people such as farmers and then repackaging and then reselling it for a much higher price.

Although not widely used, cow dung is also used as construction bricks and housing material. And as you might have guessed, the technology largely is in use in India. All you need is to simply use the search keywords cow dung bricks and cow dung houses in YouTube.

These search keywords would produce several videos about how cow dung is used as construction bricks and building materials not only in India but in other parts of the world as well like Cambodia.

This is a business that I can see developing in agricultural and rural areas of developed countries. Imagine a farmer from a developed country wanting to save money by building barns and other houses for livestock using cow dung bricks and building materials.

Animal dung was used by Europeans during the middle ages as building materials and I see no reason why an enterprising individual in Europe for example couldn’t market construction bricks made out of cow dung and lime for example.

In fact there was a study which found that animal dung when mixed with other materials like lime could be as strong as concrete bricks. Of course I don’t expect people from developed countries to use construction bricks made out of animal dung for their houses.

I would like to think that the market for cow dung bricks and housing materials would be only for buildings that house animals and other non-human things like barns and warehouses that stock grains and other farming produce.

Cow Dung can also be fashioned into other objects. They can be fashioned into what are called CowPots. If you are not familiar with CowPots, then it would be very helpful if you visit their website:

Online Website: CowPots

Simply put, CowPots and products similar to them are plant containers made out of cow dung. CowPots itself is an American company and it uses its own cows from the Freund Farms Inc. of East Canaan, Connecticut.

The company successfully exports 15% of their cow dung which is used to make the CowPots plant containers while using the rest for their own farm’s needs.

As can be seen, using composted cow dung as biodegradable plant containers is good business. So good in fact that there are other companies offering similar competing products. One of the reasons could be because more and more people are becoming Eco-Friendly.

And then there’s art. It might be surprising for people living in highly developed modern societies, but cow dung is used as an art material. This is especially true for the countries of Africa and India where there are many traditional art made out of cow dung.

The topic is too exhaustive for me to explain. But if you are interested, you can simply use the search keywords ”cow dung art” in YouTube and you would be shown many articles about cow dung being used as art.

From cow dung sculptures in India to African paintings made out of colored cow dung, the variety of art that can be made from cow dung is many. I even saw information online that cow dung art is exported by Indians to Singapore.

It is said that anything can be turned to art. Cow dung is proof that this saying is true. In countries such as India and Africa where cow dung is used just like any other material, I can definitely say that we would be seeing more and more uses of cow dung in art.

There is money to be made from cow dung. The only reason why some societies fail to see this is because they are turned off by the concept of handling and smelling cow dung. This is especially true for highly developed societies not used to being with farm animals.

Besides being used as a cooking fuel and fertilizer, they can also be used as building materials, biodegradable containers and even pieces of art. Truly, cow dung is a precious material that should not be discarded. It might even make you money.

Make Money from Human Excreta or Human Waste