HIGHLAND - Roadkill compost would be a hard sell in a vegetable garden.

But some public works crews around the state are mixing animal carcasses with other waste to save money and use nature's way to solve a problem that peaks as days grow shorter and breeding deer run rampant.

Philipstown Highway Superintendent Roger Chirico said the Putnam County town began composting dead deer earlier this year because his workers can't just “dig a hole and bury them anywhere.”

In Ulster County, the state Department of Transportation used deer compost to feed the lawn and flower garden at its headquarters. Some was spread on roadside grades.

The DOT has taken the lead on roadkill composting based on Cornell University research that it can be done safely and keeps the animals out of landfills, helping the environment while saving towns the expense of contracting to cart off the carcasses.

A highway maintenance worker demonstrated from the cab of a front-end loader, mixing piles of wood chips with the remains of two deer and a black bear.

“It sounds dirty because you're working with dead animals,” said Thomas Story, the DOT assistant resident engineer in Ulster.

“But because it's capped (with wood chips), there's no flies, no smell.”

Cornell said more than 75,000 deer are killed by motorists in the state each year, a toll that doesn't take into account the raccoons, other small mammals, bears and the occasional moose that meet their ends on the road.

Elisabeth Kolb, a DOT environmental coordinator in the lower Hudson Valley, said the composting piles can be managed to eliminate almost all health risks and the results meet federal standards that would allow use around children.

But the DOT plans to use compost only in areas like medians where people are less likely to come in contact with it, she said.

The DOT said it plans to expand the program and recommend it to local public works agencies.