Manure, manure everywhere. Compost?

[Wolf-Kim]

Among my many projects in the making, I have worm bins. Those are ready to go, as it warms up a little bit, I'll be getting the worms.

From what I have read, horse manure is hot. So that's a no-no for the worm bins and a no-no for the garden. So then that leaves the question what to do with it!?!

I only have two horses, but they leave their little presents all over the pasture. From what I've read on horse pasture management, this is one of the reasons horses are bad for pasture, because they choose a spot for the latrine and then never eat near there. And since I can't mow, the manure stays in piles in the pasture and the gnat population is directly associated with the the numbers of undisturbed piles.

What do I do!?! Can't mow it, can't put it directly in the garden, can't put it directly in the worm bins. Do I compost it? Even then, the composting sites say to let the manure age before composting it. Even if I could put it immediately into the compost pile, I don't have enough other materials to balance it out.

Ideas? Comments?

 

[Beekissed]

Sell it? Some folks bag it up and sell it to composters looking for manure....especially horse manure. Makes great compost!

I usually just pile it up and use a little bit as a time, as it ages and the chickens aerate it. I've scattered it around the drip line on my apple trees, in the pathways of my garden and made manure tea out of it.

If fresh horse manure is bad for the worms, someone needs to tell the worms where I get my horse manure. Literally crawling with worms in every forkful....clear up to the top of the heap!

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Sell it? Some folks bag it up and sell it to composters looking for manure....especially horse manure. Makes great compost!

I usually just pile it up and use a little bit as a time, as it ages and the chickens aerate it. I've scattered it around the drip line on my apple trees, in the pathways of my garden and made manure tea out of it.

If fresh horse manure is bad for the worms, someone needs to tell the worms where I get my horse manure. Literally crawling with worms in every forkful....clear up to the top of the heap!

If you pile it up, do the gnats and flies get really bad? Because I figured if the bugs breed in the small piles in the field they would have died and gone to heaven if I pile it all into one huge pile.

Were they earth worms in the manure? I thought that it would be wonderful for worm bins because horse poo is pretty much grass and other roughage, but a couple composting sites I went to was saying that it needed to age before even putting it in a compost pile. Now that one struck me as weird, aging before a compost pile? I always took composting as piling a bunch of stuff together and letting it rot! LOL

 

[Wolf-Kim]

If I were to pile it up and borrow a friend's manure spreader, could I just spread it without aging and whatnot?

 

[lupinfarm]

We just pile ours right as its dumped lol...

We've also used fresh manure on the garden before.

 

[Beekissed]

Yes, you could....that's how they do cow and chicken manure around here. Salatin says it takes longer to become useful as a nutrient this way but at least it's on there and will eventually be utilized.

The worms were the red worms that eat manure.....millions of them! The chickens made short work of them. I would venture that your chickens could also make short work of gnats and their eggs and larvae.

Problem with chickens is that they scatter your pile if you don't put it into a bin of some kind.

 

[The Vail Benton's]

I put our fresh horse manure on the compost pile and I have every intention of filling my new raised garden beds with the resulting black gold this year. Last year I didn't have horses so I went to a local horse facility and loaded our trailer, brought it home, spread it and tilled it into our garden areas. I've never heard that horse manure wasn't okay for worms or that it should be aged prior to composting... It would be facsinationg to know why...

 

[enjoy the ride]

My horse manure gets spread fresh in a paddock in winter where the horses will not be grazing for 6 mos. The rest is put in a compost heap in a band of trees- the seperation and shade helps keep the flies down (unfortunately not the gnats.) It is about 1/3 the volume by spring and can be used for the veggie garden and flowers. I do not turn it at all nor cover it nor water it.
As to worms- well they seem to like the manure in the pile just fine. I can turn them over by the shovel full. I have never done a vermiculture so don't know about that.

 

[Organics North]

I don't think I would put the worms in a bin full of horse manure. But it is something you could add to the worm bin fresh. Just so it does not start to hot compost and cook the worms. (See outside they can escape if it gets to hot then move back in when it cools down..)

Also another minus is weed seeds, worms will not kill the weed seeds. So your vermicompost could be weedy.

I would just do a real quick hot compost job and use it straight up or give it to your worms to make it even better!

on

 

[patandchickens]

Me, my horses only produce manure to NEED dealing with for 5 months of the year - the winter months when I am cleaning the run-in shed and the area around it. (Obviously they deposit manure the other 7 months too, I mean, but they live outside 24/7 on pasture so I leave manure lie when at all possible, to slow the rate at which soil and pasture are robbed of nutrients)

During these winter months when I *am* collecting manure, I pile it in a disused roofed area (roof reduces the extent to which rain leaches stuff out of the pile, and keeps it from ever getting too soggy and nasty). Our winters are cold here so things don't compost super fast this way, but by mid-summer there is some reasonably compost-y stuff at the bottom of the oldest end of the pile if I really need it, plus the rest of the pile has sat long enough that it can be put on pasture or garden in limited amounts if I need to. (I dust the winter's worth of shavings out of the stalls -- I do *have* stalls, I just virtually never *use* them -- over the pile and get no flies or odor out of it)

Actually, the year before last I never actually quite got around to disposing of the previous year's manure pile, so it ended up sitting there for *2* years, and when I went to do something with it last summer about 95% of the pile had turned into the most *wonderful* fluffy black compost. This is part of the reason I have opened a new veg garden, because I had all that available at once

So this year I am actually intentionally piling things so I can let them sit for 2 consecutive years. If you have the storage space -- and I would guess that most of us do -- it is no more work, and it removes the necessity for wasting energy moving around large quantities of only-partially-composted material.

For stalled horses, IME the most efficient thing is to try to remove as few shavings with the manure as possible, because it composts faster that way -- if you can afford those rubber crumb cushioned stall floors, they ROCK in all possible ways -- and then expect to have to turn, and possibly dampen, the pile periodically if you are on a deadline for composting.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat