Mushroom Cultivation on the Bed of Feces from Shiba Goats

The Shiba is a miniature and robust goat native to Japan. A female Shiba has no seasonal gestation. In a closed ecosystem, the goat is expected to be a useful animal for eating crop leavings and providing meat and milk to humans. To find a practical way of recycling the feces from Shiba goats in the closed ecosystem, we examined mushrooms cultivated on the beds of ground and sterilized feces supplemented with roughage and without. In a thermal and humid controlled incubator, oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) and shiitake mushroom (Lentinus edodes) were cultivated. After 60 days, oyster mushrooms had grown on the beds of feces supplemented with roughage. Shiitake mushrooms failed to grow due to the lack of hyphae growth.