Next up for International Compost Awareness Week: If you can’t put manure in your compost pile, what do you do with it???
These handy articles below explain a bit about why you should use it, and how you can safely compost it!
“Manure is a low-cost fertilizer and a wonderful way to utilize nutrients instead of creating a pile that is not getting used and could be harmful to water quality,”
“Simply aging a manure pile for three months can kill about 60 percent of the weed seeds present, and bacterial counts start to drop within days after the manure leaves the animal. Then, when the aged manure is mixed into the soil, soil microorganisms clear out residual bacteria in about a month.”
I(mod S) have chickens and guinea fowl, all of whom create so. much. manure. There are a couple different ways I handle their waste, both of which require as little effort as I can possibly manage. The first is my designated bird waste spot, which is a repurposed feed trough that was probably originally intended for cattle, so it’s rather large. When the coops get cleaned out, the waste goes in the trough. It sits for a while, a few months at least, until it looks more like soil than manure. Then I usually plant it with flowers, gourds, maybe decorative pumpkins - in other words, things not for eating. After those plants have lived out their lives and died back, I dig out the now fantastic soil and distribute it around various beds, wherever it’s needed.
The other method I use is when I’m making a raised bed. I avoid buying soil as much as I possibly can, so I tend to get kinda creative when I need to fill in a bed. I put a few rotting logs in the bottom, followed by a thick layer of manure, and then a thick layer of soil. Then after a week when it settles a bunch and is no longer as high as I want it, I add more soil. This creates really nice soil that won’t need amending for a few years, at least, and since there is several inches at least of soil on top, I can plant directly in it, rather than having to wait for it to decompose.
Also, as a bonus for chicken keepers, you can feed them the dairy and meat that all the guides say not to put in the compost pile!
Don’t have your own animals creating manure, but have space to compost it? Many horse farms, at least around where I live, have more than they can deal with, and some actually pay to have it carted away. You may be able to score a load for free!
If getting manure from someone else, keep in mind that there may be herbicides, pesticides, or other chemicals in it. It is exceedingly rare for horses to be kept organic, and it isn’t particularly common for chickens, either. Additionally, while chickens’ digestion kills weed seeds, other animals do not! Fascinatingly, some farmers have intentionally fed seeds such as clover to their animals with the intention of spreading them about the pasture via manure with decent success!
Happy composting!
- Mod S
Chickens, I believe, are unique in that their digestive system destroys seeds on the way through.
Basically, to my understanding, the seeds are ground up in the gizzard, destroying many of them. I believe that further along the digestive tract there are other things that also reduce the viability of seeds. This doesn’t happen to every type of seed, it isn’t 100% effective, but it’s incredibly helpful in the garden! I personally feed my chickens nearly all of the weeds I pull. Even if they don’t eat them (they don’t seem to like mint) I know that with their scratching and running around, nothing is going to grow in their coop, effectively ending those particular plants reproduction.
Mulch is awesome! I would like to note that if you are using kitchen scraps or manure, they need to decompose first, for two main reason. The first is that the process of decomposition uses nitrogen, and will pull it from the soil and away from plants. The second is that both, though manure is more of a concern, can carry bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli.
