What to do with dead fowl

Good day all

General question: what do you do with your birds that don't make it? Ten years of raising chickens has convinced me of two things. Chickens can just up and die and everything loves chicken.

What I would *like* to do is compost them so that at least their nutrients can go into the soil and feed the garden. I do this with any chicks that don't make it but not anything larger. The reason I don't is that my compost pile is too small and I don't really want scavengers around the property digging it up. I've heard of people digging a hole in their manure pile and putting their dead ones as well as the viscera and feathers from processing, but they can bury that deep enough to keep scavengers out. I'm also worried about the smell if I overload the compost. I'm not sure if my pile runs hot enough to kill off pathogens.

Tossing the body in the trash seems wasteful to me. While I know they're just chickens, and we don't make pets of ours, it also seems disrespectful.