IME, horse poo really *is* the nectar of the gods! It breaks down
easily, is easy to handle, is moderately available (there's always a
pony club or horse-mad teenager somewhere nearby) and, best of all, it
doesn't smell too bad.

In years gone by, I was able to use the shovellings from our own stables
(wood-shavings with poo) and that's the best fertiliser/mulch combo I've
ever struck. Did no end of good to me roses as well as the few veggies I
was growing at the time. I dislike cow-poo for purely subjective
reasons: it smells bad (to my nose, anyway) and it behaves like
ready-mix concrete, forming nasty little tam o'shanters on hitting the
ground and then crusting over to fool you into believing it's safe to
pick up in your hands. Hah! Forget cow-poo!

I wouldn't use carnivore-poo, simply because I'm aware of the nasty
parasites that can live in it (much worse, IMHO, than those occuring in
herbivore-poo). Of course, the fact that my dog and cat both enjoy
leaving gratuitous deposits on my rose garden doesn't fill my heart with
song, but there y'go: y'can't win 'em all.

Something deep in my soul balks at using hay for mulch. The fact that
some poor, starving animal could be surviving on it stops me from
spreading it over my soil. Instead, I've recently graduated to using
sugar-cane mulch and it's reasonably OK. It plays merry-harry with me
asthma (dust), but it's doing a pretty good job of preserving soil
moisture for me, so it'll do for now. I've used straw and it's OK too,
but breaks down surprisingly quickly. I've often thought it'd be great
to be able to whack it through a chaff-cutter and make it a bit more
friable, IYKWIM.

--
Trish Brown {|:-}

Newcastle, NSW, Australia