(Not sure if this should go under Environmental, Livestock, Politics, or?)

Anyway, I would like to hear how you guys manage your livestock manure. I was cleaning the barn and paddocks today and was also thinking about the Getting Older on the Homestead (sic) post on CS. Just wondering: 1) What do you do with manure? Compost it? Put it on your beds hot? In Fall, Spring? 2) How do you collect it? Manure bucket, frontloader? D-1? LOL 3) How do you manage for flies? 4) How do you manage for smell? 4) How often do you pick up manure, clean barns, stalls, etc.... Or anything else you could tell me about your manure management.

I recently completed a survey for the University of Washington and some questions were related to environmental concerns on farms. Managing for manure and run-off seemed to be a big focus. Plus, I also was surveyed by WA state (doing kind of a farm census...good thing I'm not paranoid, eh?) but that was more along the lines of what kind of livestock do you raise, etc.

Thanks for sharing. No need to post manure pile pics, probably, tho...? I dunno?!

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2001

Answers

Hi Sheepish! I have 4 horses and the stalls get cleaned twice a day. I bed with sawdust, so I use a manure fork geared for sawdust, put it in a manure basket, or wheelbarrow, and take it out to the traditional manure pile, which is in back my barn about 30 feet. I spread it on my hayfield in the fall and again in the spring, usually loading it by hand into the spreader. There is no smell until I am opening it up to put in the spreader. And being away from the barn, I have almost no flies. My goat gets bedded on hay and her stall gets cleaned 2-3 times a year. That manure either goes in my compost pile or to my neighbors for their garden.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2001

I am currently helping a co worker with a horse and cattle farm do some research to develop a large scale vermicompost system to utilize his manure byproducts to enrich his patures.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2001

Well, back in the days when I had REAL manure.....

With our cattle, we would bed them on deep straw and they could come and go in and out of the barn as they pleased. Ditto the hogs, but they very rarely soiled their bedding inside, preferring to pick one corner of their lot and potty there. We would clean the barn well in the fall and put that manure directly on the dormant garden, tilling it in. In the spring, we would clean the barn again, but that manure would be sheet composted on whatever area we were leaving fallow, or used sparingly to side dress heavy feeders. I would keep it at least 1 foot away from the corn or whatever. Chicken manure is hot, and I always let it compost for at least a year, or sheet composted it on fallow ground. Rabbit manure can go directly around plants as mulch, or can be tilled into the soil right before planting without danger of burning the plants. I'm sure I have a reference somewhere around here that tells what manures are "hot" and which are "cold", but I'm not sure where to look right now. I do know for sure that cow, horse, chicken and hog are hot and that rabbit is cold; but I suppose you want to know about sheep!!

This stuff I've got now is sawdust with a mixture of poop from whatever animals came through the sale barn that day. It has supposedly been composting for one to three years, but it is still working. It is a beautiful crumbly black stuff. I used it as a mulch/sidedress around my tomato plants - put a big bottomless pot over them, then put a ring of compost around, then removed the pot. I mixed it in with the soil that I dug out of the holes to put my pumpkin and melon transplants in, as I was planting them. It was pretty warm to the touch still (from down in the pile - outer stuff was cool). I've also dressed my new perennial bed with a very light covering of it; and piled it about 6" deep in my new beds that I don't plan to plant anything in 'til next year. I'll dig it in at my leisure. (Leisure - snort!) With some of what is left, I plan to dig in to my raised beds as I pull out the spring and summer crops. I have decided to forego a fall garden this year, partly because I got the spring one out so late, and also so that I can get this mulch on the beds and dug in for a good start next year. The last of it, I will just spread over and till in where my new raised beds will go next year.

As to moving it - I have at one time or the other used buckets, baskets, shovels, pitchforks, wheelbarrows, manure spreaders, trailors, tractor scoops and now Mike is hauling it in for me by ton and a half loads. I'm moving part of it with a shovel and barrow, the rest with a blade on the tractor.

Flies - chickens. Nothing better. If you've got a lot of flies, you need to add something to get your pile working hot. Mostly manure, add fibrous stuff. Dry, add water. Too much fiber, add manure or green clippings.

Smell - keep it down wind of the house and clothesline. I expect poop to smell like poop, but it really doesn't have a bad odor if you keep it cleaned up and till it in in a hurry. Compost shouln't smell bad either, if it is working right.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2001

Fortunately, or unfortunately (it's a mixed bag), I'm not the one in charge of manure management at the barn. If I were, things would have to be done differently, because I see changes on the horizon as to what will be allowed/disallowed in manure management. At present, with the farm I'm at being 60 acres, there is a huge manure heap out in one of the wooded areas. So far it hasn't been a problem, but I am attempting to convince the barn manager that it's time to spread it and till up some of the poorer pastures and reseed them.

There is talk about concrete bunkers possibly becoming required for manure storage/composting as opposed to open pit/stack here in the state. I don't know if it will go that direction or not, but it seems like a good idea, if somewhat expensive initially.

People I used to be with in the horse business wanted to buy land with the water table a mere 3' down and were just planning to pile it up like they always did (bad management) and I told them that they would be in trouble with the county board for water pollution -- and possibly the EPA -- in no time flat if they did that. They bought another place instead that came with one of the concrete containment bins and that would have been okay, except that once they'd filled it, they didn't pay for disposal, they just continued to pile it up elsewhere and now it is polluting the lake they are next to and their butts are for the sling in short order.

With 26 horses manure & shavings to manage, it is collected from stalls(daily, by hand with a manure fork) on an ATV type runaround with a flatbed and taken to the pile for holding and some composting. Eventually this will be transferred to the big pile in the woods(via tractor) for further composting (would be better if she covered the piles, can't get her to do that either!), and periodically we have a purge, advertise it for the taking and get in a neighbor's front end loader to load up the trucks and trailers that show up.

It gets darn smelly in hot/wet weather, and I keep nagging about covering. Got lots of fly traps around, pastures are dragged out regularly. Barn manager hasn't kept up on the fly predators, which is too bad, because they worked fairly well for me when I managed my own barn. Some other large-ish horse barns drag out their stall cleanings into riding paths around the perimeter of the place. It does make for a good footing on the trails, which are next to their hay fields.

I was just out to the back pile tonite with my fork and some big muck buckets (2 bushel) filling it up with the aged stuff for my vegetable beds that I'm establishing this summer. After I finish those, I'll keep hauling a bit at a time since I want to set up a rhubarb bed (adn they just love manure) this year, and get ready to put in asparagas next spring in another, got lots of shrubs that would like a top dressing, got a woodland bed I'm establishing under an 80 year old Box Elder that I'll use it on too, plus I'll be hauling fresh to put into the compost bin to balance out a lot of 'brown' that I seem to be getting this year.

My bunny's litter box gets emptied out on a different rose bush or shrub every day...Big shrubs get it for many successive days.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001