I have always heard that cow manure is vastly better for gardening
than horse manure, but I do have a neighbor with a horse. What if I
composted the horse manure and allowed it to age for a year or two
before use?

Davej wrote:
I have always heard that cow manure is vastly better for gardening
than horse manure, but I do have a neighbor with a horse. What if I
composted the horse manure and allowed it to age for a year or two
before use?

A Yahoo search on Compost "horse manure" produced
these and other results:
whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/horsecompost.htm
www.piercecountycd.org/tip_compmanure_p.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_5474391_comp...se-manure.html

Based on them, three months in the summer and six months
in the winter is adequate for horse manure in a compost
pile.

Because horses and cows are vegetarians, their manures are
preferable to that of other animals. But are manure needs
to be composted for three to six months before applying to
the soil.

Dick

In article
,
Davej wrote:

I have always heard that cow manure is vastly better for gardening
than horse manure, but I do have a neighbor with a horse. What if I
composted the horse manure and allowed it to age for a year or two
before use?

http://www.plantea.com/manuer.htm

How common manures measure up
Manure Chicken Diary cow Horse Steer Rabbit
N 1.1 .257 .70 .70 2.4

P .80 .15 .30 .30 1.4

K .50 .25 .60 .40 .60

Manure Sheep Alfalfa Fish Emulsion
N .70 3 5

P .30 1 1

K .90 2 1

Sources: Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, An
Illustrated Guide to
Organic Gardening, by Sunset Publishing, and the Rodale Guide to
Composting.

Note: Nutrient values of manures vary greatly, depending on the diet and
age of the animals, and the nature and quantiy of bedding in the mix.


Chicken manure
Poultry manure (chicken in particular) is the richest animal manure in
N-P-K. Chicken manure is considered "hot" and must be composted before
adding it to the garden. Otherwise, it will burn any plants it comes in
contact with.

Dairy (cow) manure
"Dairy Manure may be the single most useful soil-builder around," says
Ann Lovejoy, lifetime organic gardener and writer in Seattle,
Washington. "Washed dairy manure from healthy cows is just about perfect
for garden use; it can be used as a topdressing and for soil
improvement," she adds. Dairy manure is preferable to steer manure,
which has a higher salt and weed seed content. Though cow manure has low
nutrient numbers, that's what makes ist safe to use in unlimited
quantities.


Horse manure
Horse manure is about half as rich as chicken manure, but richer in
nitrogen than cow manure. And, like chicken droppings, it's considered
"hot". Horse manure often contains a lot of weed seeds, which means it's
a good idea to compost it using a hot composting method.

Steer manure
Steer manure is one of the old standbys, but it's not the most beloved
because it often contains unwanted salts and weed seeds.
--

Billy

E Pluribus Unum

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

Davej wrote:
I have always heard that cow manure is vastly better for gardening
than horse manure, but I do have a neighbor with a horse. What if I
composted the horse manure and allowed it to age for a year or two
before use?


There is not a huge difference between the two in nutrient content once you
allow for the difference in water content. Fresh from the beast, cow has
more water than horse, once dried out not so much. There are small
differences depending on the diet of the beast and other variations. Horse
and cow are NOT like chicken manure or synthetic fertilisers in that even
when fresh you would have to put a lot on to sensitive plants to burn them.
Used thoughtfully it isn't a problem. Once it has aged a bit you can plant
straight into it, I got 100kg of pumpkins off a volunteer vine that grew
where the heap was one year.

I use horse all the time and it is excellent. There is no need to compost
it for ages, I have used it hot to trot so to speak on well established
trees and shrubs. Normally I collect it in winter when it is easiest and
leave it in a pile til spring without any attention, this will break up the
pucks and reduce the smell to almost nothing. If you age it for years you
will lose nutrients - but the grass downhill from the compost heap will grow
very well.

You need to consider the provenance of the manure, whatever seeds the horses
are eating many will survive their gut and germinate once the manure is
spread. A short period of hot composting will kill the seeds or just try it
on a small area and see what happens, it may or may not be a problem.

In my view whatever organic matter you can get locally and cheaply (or free)
is always superior to what you may buy or truck in.

To all those who say that it is essential to compost manure before use, I
ask why?

David

David Hare-Scott wrote:
....
In my view whatever organic matter you can get locally and cheaply (or free)
is always superior to what you may buy or truck in.

if it is clean, sure. however, i'm wary
of taking anything from a farm these days.
things aren't the way they used to be.
animals are moved around a lot more now and
there are more resistant diseases.


To all those who say that it is essential to compost manure before use, I
ask why?

ever hear of E.coli O157:H7 ?

for children and elderly there is 6%
chance of kidney failure if infected. for
the rest of us it can mean bloody poo,
vomiting and other fun stuff.

this bacteria can be found in even healthy
animals with no obvious sign it is there short
of testing each pile of poo. it can take as
little as 100 bacteria to cause an infection
(in my opinion 1 is enough if you happen to
be really unlucky or are immunologically
under the weather).

and then there are the flesh eating staph
bacterias going around now too. a friend
lost his foot and it's very likely it came
from horse manure.

i'm sticking to green manures and worm
composting of green manures, that's about all
the risk i want to take.


songbird

Is anyone at all still concerned about aminopyralid in manure?

In article ,
songbird wrote:

David Hare-Scott wrote:
...
In my view whatever organic matter you can get locally and cheaply (or
free)
is always superior to what you may buy or truck in.

if it is clean, sure. however, i'm wary
of taking anything from a farm these days.
things aren't the way they used to be.
animals are moved around a lot more now and
there are more resistant diseases.


To all those who say that it is essential to compost manure before use, I
ask why?

ever hear of E.coli O157:H7 ?
This comes from CAFOs where steers are fed grains that acidify their
stomachs,

for children and elderly there is 6%
chance of kidney failure if infected. for
the rest of us it can mean bloody poo,
vomiting and other fun stuff.

this bacteria can be found in even healthy
animals with no obvious sign it is there short
of testing each pile of poo. it can take as
little as 100 bacteria to cause an infection
(in my opinion 1 is enough if you happen to
be really unlucky or are immunologically
under the weather).

and then there are the flesh eating staph
bacterias going around now too. a friend
lost his foot and it's very likely it came
from horse manure.
Again, it comes from CAFOs where animals are routinely given
anti-biotics. Washing your hands will go a long way towards cutting
transmission.

i'm sticking to green manures and worm
composting of green manures, that's about all
the risk i want to take.
A sound choice, but I hate to see perfectly good manure go to waste.


songbird
--

Billy

E Pluribus Unum

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

"phorbin" wrote in message
...


Is anyone at all still concerned about aminopyralid in manure?

No. And I'm not concered about any other forms of goobers in manure either.

In article ,
phorbin wrote:

Is anyone at all still concerned about aminopyralid in manure?

It has been a known problem since at least 2009. It doesn't make sense
that sellers of manure wouldn't protect themselves (conjecture) from
law-suit by testing for aminopyralid. In any event, it is best to know
where the manure came from, and best, if you can talk to the owner. They
may be a lying scum-bags, but if they have been in one location for any
time, they are probably trust worthy (at least when it come to manure).
--

Billy

E Pluribus Unum

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

phorbin wrote:
Is anyone at all still concerned about aminopyralid in manure?

As for the seed issue, know the provenance of your manure. I get it from
the horses outside my window and i know for sure that it hasn't been put on
my pasture.

David

In article ,
says...
"phorbin" wrote in message
...


Is anyone at all still concerned about aminopyralid in manure?

No. And I'm not concered about any other forms of goobers in manure either.

AKA Milestone (Dow)... and others in the same class of persistent
herbicide.

Billy has the right of it... --Even then, if the hay season goes wrong
and they have to buy hay, the manure can become contaminated.

The issue dropped off my horizon for awhile but a very quick search
revealed problems still arising in the UK, USA and a whiff of concern in
Oz as of 2011.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...ul/15/vegetabl
es-disease-aminopyralid-pesticide

http://aussieorganicgardening.com/?p=1078

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?not..._fb_noscript=1

With this in mind I'm going to suggest to my wife that we should put
together a pre-season advisory flyer for our community gardeners.

Gotta keep a step ahead.

Dave this is very easy to do. Simply go to your neighbors once every other week and get a load of manure. Bring it back and start a pile next to your garden. You can speed the composting process up by turning the pile before adding a new load. Done this way, you will have an endless supply of nutrients for you garden soil. Think Spring!

songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
...
In my view whatever organic matter you can get locally and cheaply
(or free) is always superior to what you may buy or truck in.

if it is clean, sure. however, i'm wary
of taking anything from a farm these days.
things aren't the way they used to be.
animals are moved around a lot more now and
there are more resistant diseases.


To all those who say that it is essential to compost manure before
use, I ask why?

ever hear of E.coli O157:H7 ?


No but I am sure it's nasty

for children and elderly there is 6%
chance of kidney failure if infected. for
the rest of us it can mean bloody poo,
vomiting and other fun stuff.

this bacteria can be found in even healthy
animals with no obvious sign it is there short
of testing each pile of poo. it can take as
little as 100 bacteria to cause an infection
(in my opinion 1 is enough if you happen to
be really unlucky or are immunologically
under the weather).

Can you give me a reference for these statements?


and then there are the flesh eating staph
bacterias going around now too. a friend
lost his foot and it's very likely it came
from horse manure.


How would you know that?

i'm sticking to green manures and worm
composting of green manures, that's about all
the risk i want to take.


songbird

There are some very nasty bugs around: what chance they are found in
manure, what chance you catch them from it (assuming you are not eating the
stuff) and will composting kill every one? Once you discount the yuck
factor what is the real risk? I don't know the answer to any of those
questions. I have been handling horse for years and never got poisoning.
You can get some terrible bugs from supermarket lettuce, it seems to happen
in the USA every other week. We live in a soup of gazillions of microbes,
in our air, soil and water, and on our skin and every surface in our
dwellings. Life is a lottery that we all play.

David

In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
...
In my view whatever organic matter you can get locally and cheaply
(or free) is always superior to what you may buy or truck in.

if it is clean, sure. however, i'm wary
of taking anything from a farm these days.
things aren't the way they used to be.
animals are moved around a lot more now and
there are more resistant diseases.


To all those who say that it is essential to compost manure before
use, I ask why?

ever hear of E.coli O157:H7 ?


No but I am sure it's nasty
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan
http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dile...als/dp/0143038
583/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815576&sr=1-1
(Available at a library near you, as long as they remain open.)

p.82

One of the bacteria that almost certainly resides in the manure I'm
standing in is particularly lethal to humans. Escherichia coli 0157:H7
is a relatively new strain of the common intestinal
bacteria (no one had seen it before 1980) that thrives in feedlot cattle,
40 percent of which carry it in their gut. Ingesting as few as ten of
these microbes can cause a fatal infection; they produce a toxin that
destroys human kidneys.

Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their
way into our food get killed off by the strong acids in our stomachs,
since they evolved to live in the neutral pH environment of the rumen.
But the rumen of a corn-fed feedlot steer is nearly as acidic as our own
stomachs, and in this new, man-made environment new acid-resistant
strains of E. coli, of which 0157:H7 is one, have evolved‹yet another
creature recruited by nature to absorb the excess biomass coming off the
Farm Belt. The problem with these bugs is that they, can shake off the
acid bath in our stomachs‹and then go on to kill us. By acidifying the
rumen with corn we've broken down one of our food chain's most important
barriers to infection. Yet another solution turned into a problem.

We've recently discovered that this process of acidification can be
reversed, and that doing so can greatly diminish the threat from E. coli
0157:H7. Jim Russell, a USDA microbiologist on the faculty at Cornell,
has found that switching a cow's diet from corn to grass or hay for a
few days prior to slaughter reduces the population of E. coli 0157:H7 in
the animal's gut by as much as 80 percent. But such a solution (Grass?!)
is considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry and (therefore)
by the USDA. Their preferred solution for dealing with bacterial
contamination is irradiation‹-essentially, to try to sterilize the
manure getting into the meat.

So much comes back to corn, this cheap feed that turns out in so
many ways to be not cheap at all. While I stood in pen 63 a dump truck
pulled up alongside the feed bunk and released a golden stream of feed.
The black mass of cowhide moved toward the trough for lunch. The
$1.60 a day I'm paying for three meals a day here is: a bargain only by
the narrowest of calculations. It doesn't take into account, for
example,



THE FEEDLOT: MAKING MEAT 83

the cost to the public health of, antibiotic resistance or food poisoning
by E.coli 0157:H7. It doesn't take into account the cost to taxpayers of
the farm subsidies that keep Poky's (feed lot) raw materials cheap. And
it certainly doesn't take into account all the many environmental costs
incurred by cheap corn.

for children and elderly there is 6%
chance of kidney failure if infected. for
the rest of us it can mean bloody poo,
vomiting and other fun stuff.

this bacteria can be found in even healthy
animals with no obvious sign it is there short
of testing each pile of poo. it can take as
little as 100 bacteria to cause an infection
(in my opinion 1 is enough if you happen to
be really unlucky or are immunologically
under the weather).

Can you give me a reference for these statements?


and then there are the flesh eating staph
bacterias going around now too. a friend
lost his foot and it's very likely it came
from horse manure.


How would you know that?

i'm sticking to green manures and worm
composting of green manures, that's about all
the risk i want to take.


songbird

There are some very nasty bugs around: what chance they are found in
manure, what chance you catch them from it (assuming you are not eating the
stuff) and will composting kill every one? Once you discount the yuck
factor what is the real risk? I don't know the answer to any of those
questions. I have been handling horse for years and never got poisoning.
You can get some terrible bugs from supermarket lettuce, it seems to happen
in the USA every other week. We live in a soup of gazillions of microbes,
in our air, soil and water, and on our skin and every surface in our
dwellings. Life is a lottery that we all play.

David
--

Billy

E Pluribus Unum

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

"Derald" wrote in message
m...
phorbin wrote:



Is anyone at all still concerned about aminopyralid in manure?
Not I, but I know my sources.

Same here.