Manure, manure everywhere. Compost?

[miss_thenorth]

In the summer, when the horses are on pasture and they make thier deposits, we go through about once a week or so, and rake the plops to break them up. In the winter, when we are cleaning stalls, we pile it up in the middle of their paddock/dry lot ( they do not go out on pasture in the winter). every now and again we turn this pile with the skidsteer. Then in the spring, it gets moved to another area to spend the summer. The previous winter's pile then gets spread on the pasture.

Also, while cleaning the rabbit and quail droppings, we collect in a wheel barrow, once a week in the winter, and spread immediately onto pasture with a pitchfork. If I need some for gardens, I either take rabbit poo, or aged horse poo and use as needed.

Next year we will be borrowing a manure spreader, but this year we just loaded a utility trailer pulled behind the quad and started pitching.

 

[Farmfresh]

We used to pile ours (covered) in the spring, summer, and fall months then spread in on the garden in late fall. By next spring it was glorious for planting in. A small warning is that SOME plants actually like more poor soil, like potatoes for instance. We usually rotated where we manured so that parts of the garden only got treated every other year. Corn and tomatoes LOVED it!!

Also be sure to drag your pasture with a harrow several times a year to break up and spread those pasture clumps. This helps the pasture and helps slow down intestinal parasites as well.

 

[ducks4you]

It depends upon how much land you have. Here's MY layout:
http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4412&p=5
I live on the West street of a town of 200 (with an AG2 zoning.) DH was very worried that our accumulating manure would distress our neighbors, and I was concerned that I wouldn't have a place to put it. We moved here in November, 1999 with 5 horses. WELL, now I'm into gardening, and the problem has solved itself. I only pick up manure in my lush, south pasture. I don't bother picking up behind the barn, or in my north pasture. I just let the weather do it's job. I DO clean my shelter and, since I have 2 horses in stalls at night, I have to keep up with stall cleaning. I agree with Pat about the shavings, but I found a solution to that, too, THIS year. I have surrounded by 1-3 year old fruit trees with stall pickup, and making a circle around my 4 other aged fruit trees, at the drip line to fertilize. It doesn't matter that shavings go there. When I clean the 12 x 16 stall where I put my hens, I'm going to move it all to the burn pile in a few months, where the shavings will help. Then, I'll use those ashes where they'll help.
Where I have created manure dumps in the around the barn turnout, I let it age. Where it's turning into dirt I'll be tilling and removing for gardening. I ALWAYS offer my manure to gardening friends, BUT, they have to do the labor. I give them plastic feed bags to fill, and duct-tape to close.
Do you have any roses? Roses love fresh horse manure--I remember hearing older women (when I was a kid) follow the milk wagon to pick up manure from the horse for their roses. You could ALSO bury your fresh manure with dirt on top of it in your garden, and let the worms do the work for you. I have ALWAYS put 2 handfuls of fresh manure at the bottom of deep holes I did for my tomato plants, and I've NEVER burned them out.
If you could sell some of it, let me know what you charge!!

 

[Ohioann]

We have a pony and 4 donkeys and we use the manure and stall cleanings by piling them in a windrow and letting them sit for a year. If you have the room just pile the manure with stall cleanings, leaves or what have you. Then we use them in the garden. When we built our raised beds one fall we filled them to the top with the stall cleanings/manure and let them set all winter. In the spring I put a bale of ProMix (commercial soil) on each bed and planted. Each fall we cover the beds with a thin layer of stall cleanings and let them set. We use shredded paper, dry leave and wood shavings (when they are on special)in our stalls for bedding. The animals have 24/7 access to stalls or outside, they choose. It works well. I have also dumped a wheelbarrow load of stall cleanings in the chicken yard and they make short work of spreading it around, scavanging spilled grain and any flies, gnats, etc.

 

[The Vail Benton's]

We have a pony and 4 donkeys and we use the manure and stall cleanings by piling them in a windrow and letting them sit for a year. If you have the room just pile the manure with stall cleanings, leaves or what have you. Then we use them in the garden. When we built our raised beds one fall we filled them to the top with the stall cleanings/manure and let them set all winter. In the spring I put a bale of ProMix (commercial soil) on each bed and planted. Each fall we cover the beds with a thin layer of stall cleanings and let them set. We use shredded paper, dry leave and wood shavings (when they are on special)in our stalls for bedding. The animals have 24/7 access to stalls or outside, they choose. It works well. I have also dumped a wheelbarrow load of stall cleanings in the chicken yard and they make short work of spreading it around, scavanging spilled grain and any flies, gnats, etc.

I hadn't thought of dumping some horse manure in my chicken runs for them to scratch through... I'm gonna try that. If nothing else, it'll give them something to do, right?

 

[lupinfarm]

Oh, might as well say.. this is my first year with goats but what I've been doing is cleaning my goat house out of all the soiled hay and pellets and dumping it on top of my snowed in raised beds. In approx. 2 weeks I'll put the raised bed covers on (the polytunnels) and as soon as the snow starts to melt, I'll start digging in the manure from the goat house. I'm not sure how effective this will be, or how many weeds I stand to develop lol but it sounds like it may work at least a little. I'm throwing in some of my horse manure too.

I'm going with a very thick layer of mulch this year lol to combat the weeds and once I've planted my blackberries or raspberries in that bed (not sure which yet, and Pat suggested I dig below the soil level in my bed and plant them right in then top dress with lots of mulch) I'm layering with some newspaper and then mulching to cover ALLLLLLL my bases hahahaha.

Like I've said, we seem to be the weed capitol of the world. Our thistles are at the point where pulling them just doesn't work, you have to poison them. They're SEVEN FEET TALL!!!!!!

 

[ducks4you]

You know, lupin, we're gonna wonder what we'd do WITHOUT the manure!!!!

 

[Wolf-Kim]

I've heard of the deep litter method, haven't read up on it(yet). But what if I were to just start a compost heap in the chickens run, kind of like you put your barrelful of stall cleanings in there. The only thing I'm wondering about though is, my chicken run has drainage issues, would composting make this worse or better? Would the compost be salvageable? Or would it get so mixed under that it would be hopeless to dig it out to use in the garden?

I'm thinking that I'll just pick up some pallets and make a compost bin back behind the barn and just compost the horse manure. Bugs are my biggest worry, the gnats and sometimes flies here in NC are aweful enough as it is, they definately don't need any help!

-Kim

 

[ducks4you]

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)
I re-read this post and I think it's applicable to your situation. Rock on, Pat!!
My two horses xxxp out way too much for a little pallet collector--piles are better.

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

I re-read this post and I think it's applicable to your situation. Rock on, Pat!! Anyway, MY two horses xxxp out way to much for a pallet collector.

 

[patandchickens]

what if I were to just start a compost heap in the chickens run, kind of like you put your barrelful of stall cleanings in there. The only thing I'm wondering about though is, my chicken run has drainage issues, would composting make this worse or better? Would the compost be salvageable? Or would it get so mixed under that it would be hopeless to dig it out to use in the garden?

I am sure it depends somewhat on your soil. But on my soil (a clayey loam), stall cleanings become part of the dirt fairly quickly. Larger more fibrous materials (large stemmy weeds, etc) stay separate for longer, like maybe a month or two in summer and a bit longer in winter, but if you don't rake them out during that phase they too merge with the dirt. Basically it all merges with the dirt, here -- you can shovel the enriched dirt out, but if that's not what you want, best to remove the material after the chickens haven't had it TOO long.

Be aware it will not be a compost 'heap', as the chickens will spread it equally over the entire run. Fine for poo-enrichment, and chicken entertainment, and readying stuff to become better soil amendment; however it prevents hot composting, if you care about that, and is a bit disorganized

If your soil's drainage issues involve being too spongy and holding too much water already, I will bet you dollars to donuts (or loonies to timbits, for Canadians, LOL) that the problem will gradually become worse if you allow fully-broken-down material to build up in the run. In a few special cases the reverse will happen, but I would not bet on it unless your situation is really unusual.

As for the horses -- most people produce too much horse manure (hm, that doesn't sound quite the way I meant it ) for pallets to be of use -- just make a pile or windrow. To some extent, flies can be deterred from breeding in it by keeping the inactive parts covered with a thin layer of soil or semi-composted manure or shavings (if you clean stalls, this can be achieved by picking out the poo into a separate container from the merely-wet shavings, and using the latter to topdress the compost pile). But the latter requires a very organized approach to putting your manure on the pile.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat