Manure Question

I have a really weird question for you all that are knowledgable.

How long does manure keep its nutritional value for plants? I have quite a few fields where we train dogs that are pasture land for horses and cattle. I was seriously thinking about going out and picking up a few 5 gallon buckets of cowpies from last season and for horse manure from last season to put into my compost pile but I wasn't sure if it has any value left in it after sitting all fall and winter.

Since you are going to compost it, it ought to work just fine (the other ingredients in your compost pile will blend together and enrich one another).

In fact, I'd prefer to have manure that's a couple/few years old.

scmelik wrote:I have a really weird question for you all that are knowledgable.

How long does manure keep its nutritional value for plants? I have quite a few fields where we train dogs that are pasture land for horses and cattle. I was seriously thinking about going out and picking up a few 5 gallon buckets of cowpies from last season and for horse manure from last season to put into my compost pile but I wasn't sure if it has any value left in it after sitting all fall and winter.

Grab as many cowpies and stablecakes(horse manure) as you can possibly carry.

Too Tall Tomatoes wrote:

scmelik wrote:I have a really weird question for you all that are knowledgable.

How long does manure keep its nutritional value for plants? I have quite a few fields where we train dogs that are pasture land for horses and cattle. I was seriously thinking about going out and picking up a few 5 gallon buckets of cowpies from last season and for horse manure from last season to put into my compost pile but I wasn't sure if it has any value left in it after sitting all fall and winter.

Grab as many cowpies and stablecakes(horse manure) as you can possibly carry.

+1

The saleswoman at Agway offered me composted horse manure for free... Don't think I have any reservation driving on up to her barn and taking as much as she'll give me!!! Well, maybe I'll rent a car.

philct wrote:
Well, maybe I'll rent a car.

Hey Phil...maybe you should rent a truck?

UnderTheBlackWalnut wrote:

philct wrote:
Well, maybe I'll rent a car.

Hey Phil...maybe you should rent a truck?

Excellent advice...

UnderTheBlackWalnut wrote:

philct wrote:
Well, maybe I'll rent a car.

Hey Phil...maybe you should rent a truck?

And be prepared to stop at the car wash on the way to taking the truck back.

philct wrote:

Too Tall Tomatoes wrote:

scmelik wrote:I have a really weird question for you all that are knowledgable.

How long does manure keep its nutritional value for plants? I have quite a few fields where we train dogs that are pasture land for horses and cattle. I was seriously thinking about going out and picking up a few 5 gallon buckets of cowpies from last season and for horse manure from last season to put into my compost pile but I wasn't sure if it has any value left in it after sitting all fall and winter.

Grab as many cowpies and stablecakes(horse manure) as you can possibly carry.

+1

The saleswoman at Agway offered me composted horse manure for free... Don't think I have any reservation driving on up to her barn and taking as much as she'll give me!!! Well, maybe I'll rent a car.

Welll.... the old manure will have lost its nitrogen component. So expect accordingly.

A word of warning about horse manure. Ask if the hay was certified weed free. There is a herbicide that is common on hay fields, especially certified weed free fields and it endures for years. I wiped out half my traditional garden using composted manure from hay I fed my animals one year. I got a deal on certified weed free hay and had no idea of its toxicity. A place in my valley that makes compost to sell almost went bankrupt after some of that manure got in their mix.

Turan wrote:
A word of warning about horse manure. Ask if the hay was certified weed free. There is a herbicide that is common on hay fields, especially certified weed free fields and it endures for years. I wiped out half my traditional garden using composted manure from hay I fed my animals one year. I got a deal on certified weed free hay and had no idea of its toxicity. A place in my valley that makes compost to sell almost went bankrupt after some of that manure got in their mix.

Yep. That herbicide is called aminopyralid. I've read about that around the time I added horse manure to my compost bin and I actually lost sleep over it. Afterwards, I contacted the woman who gave me the manure and she claims that her family has been using the horse manure for years in their gardens and nobody ever had an issue. She feeds her horses locally-grown timothy alfalfa hay and grain

I trust her.

Here's an old thread I dug up on the issue of aminopyralid.

Aminopyralid in Manure <------- click

I ride horses and was totally planning to take some manure from the pile home to put on my beds for the winter this year. The barn owner uses it for her own beds and they do really well so don't think the weed killer thing is an issue.

Bird dogs that you train? Bird dogs and South Dakota go together..

scmelik wrote:I have a really weird question for you all that are knowledgable.

How long does manure keep its nutritional value for plants? I have quite a few fields where we train dogs that are pasture land for horses and cattle. I was seriously thinking about going out and picking up a few 5 gallon buckets of cowpies from last season and for horse manure from last season to put into my compost pile but I wasn't sure if it has any value left in it after sitting all fall and winter.

When my first Munchkin was a kidde back in early March 1976 I was in the UK's military . I used the now redundant perambulator to go out cow pat collecting using several plastic bags as gloves .. three miles each way to the fields where I'd seen the dairy cows and on the way back a babies pram with a massive bag of fairly well dried cow pats in it.

Every one of my neighbours thought I was stark raving mad as I daily stacked the almost bone dry dried pats in my garden shed .. it was a tremendously dry year for the UK with unusually high temps .

There was no smell emitting from my shed .

From mid June onwards we went into water rationing via the water mains and were only allowed water after 18.00 hrs. The water for use in the day was out of two black 5 gallon plastic jerry cans

At the end of June I started digging in the dried cowpats in the bone dry chalk soil and used second hand water out the house bath tub , sink and kitchen sink drains to water the garden.

The cow pats made a fantastic blotting paper in the soil , the nutrients must have been pretty good for I was the only one around with massive carrots , lettuce , radish , greens , beans & potatoes . I was expecting to have forked carrots but they didn't fork just they just grew and grew instead.



Seven year or more years old composted stable muck that contained lots of straw is a much sought after comoddity here in the UK .

I have used it on many occasions in the past and you can grow whiskers on your baby brother with it.

plantoid wrote:

scmelik wrote:I have a really weird question for you all that are knowledgable.

How long does manure keep its nutritional value for plants? I have quite a few fields where we train dogs that are pasture land for horses and cattle. I was seriously thinking about going out and picking up a few 5 gallon buckets of cowpies from last season and for horse manure from last season to put into my compost pile but I wasn't sure if it has any value left in it after sitting all fall and winter.

When my first Munchkin was a kidde back in early March 1976 I was in the UK's military . I used the now redundant perambulator to go out cow pat collecting using several plastic bags as gloves .. three miles each way to the fields where I'd seen the dairy cows and on the way back a babies pram with a massive bag of fairly well dried cow pats in it.

Every one of my neighbours thought I was stark raving mad as I daily stacked the almost bone dry dried pats in my garden shed .. it was a tremendously dry year for the UK with unusually high temps .

There was no smell emitting from my shed .

From mid June onwards we went into water rationing via the water mains and were only allowed water after 18.00 hrs. The water for use in the day was out of two black 5 gallon plastic jerry cans

At the end of June I started digging in the dried cowpats in the bone dry chalk soil and used second hand water out the house bath tub , sink and kitchen sink drains to water the garden.

The cow pats made a fantastic blotting paper in the soil , the nutrients must have been pretty good for I was the only one around with massive carrots , lettuce , radish , greens , beans & potatoes . I was expecting to have forked carrots but they didn't fork just they just grew and grew instead.

THAT is a great tale. Thanks

rod champion wrote:Bird dogs that you train? Bird dogs and South Dakota go together..

yep we train retrievers for hunting and for field trial competitions.

Thanks everyone I am going to go and pick up a bucket load of cowpatties tomorrow and a bucket full of chicken manure from my buddies shed. I will get the stable cakes in the next few weeks. Hopefully this year my compost will workout since it didn't last year