what is the best manure?

[d_donahoo]

so. i was talking to a collegue about the corner of a paddock in muckleford that is always full of cow manure. you can basically shovel it into a trailer and i'd ask the owner if it was ok, but i don't know which house is his and i haven't run into him/her - yet!
i suggested it was good for conditioning the soil and our relatively newly aquired chooks would provide excellent nitrogen content (after being composted with a heap of other scavanged organic goodness).
he said - 'you should just get pig manure. it is the best manure'...is it? has anyone done analysis of all the different manure types and categorised them. i'm guessing what comes out is often only as good as what goes in - so anything fed on lucerne will be heaps better that something trying to get by on what has been growing in recent drought effected paddocks.
any personal favourites? or great combinations? - i have an uncle in woodend with a stable - is horse manure worth the trip? (about 40min drive)

cheers

[Mont]

I'm not a real turdologist Dan but Jackie French reckons in 'Soil Food' in which she discusses pig, horse and other manures, that 'chook dung is perhaps the richest of all manures'.

[Marcus Hamilton]

Organic Gardener had a recent article on this, I should hunt it out, but pigeon poop is the best, not very common though.

[d_donahoo]

yes - pigeon poo. i have heard this, also that they poo 90 times a day! and that they are being used in some parts of australia to protect orchards from other birds that eat all the fruit...much of this is ancedotal. but i'll head for a recent issue of organic gardener and see if i can't find the article.

cheers

[Chook Nut]

Hi,

I read the article in Organic Gardener as well that Pidgeon poo is best, but how many ppl u know have pidgeons? I studied that pig poo is great as well and have compared it with other manures and it wins hands down(sorry dont have me college notes handy on me)! Again not that easy to source, the most readily available i can source is me own chook poo, which in itself is good as long as its well composted.(like all manures)

I well composted horse poo and still got weeds galore... plus horses get drenched a lot and use all sorts of anti-biotics these days.... i know i wont be using it anymore, studies are showing that it can create harmful pathogens in the soil and get into food!

Thats all from me.... i can chase up my notes and list comparisons if you like?

Cheers........Dave

Cheers Dave

[Mont]

I got weeds galore from horse poo too, from a Sydney supplier who alleged it was not only organic but weed-free. Never again.

[Jeff Nugent]

In my opinion the best manure is the one you have. I suspect that organic humanure is the very best because of the great diets we eat, but getting enough ???
I prefer to throw horse manure into the chicken\garden system simply because the chooks eat the seed. Horses digest about 20% and eat and crap heaps. Hence the saying "eats like a horse".
Pig is good and cow is too. The closer the better, the more the merrier.

[d_donahoo]

ah. good ol' humanure...when you questioned 'where to get it i had this strange image of the world's biggest rotaloo attached to a high rise apartment building in the city...with hundreds of toilets feeding it...probably a long way off...unless we start 'eating like a horse'.

good comments of horse manure too - i guess it all comes down to the processing of your manure - 'well rotted' tends to be the most used term...

can anyone perhaps give a little rant about the value or problems with dilute urine as a nitrogen fertiliser. i understand it is soluble...so therefore should not be used around water courses...how does it work?

[Benn]

I remeber going to an info day on waste water at Southern Cross Uni (lismore) last year some time. They had a display showing appartment blocks in Europe (forget which country). The toilet was designed to separate ones and twos. Both of which were stored under the building and sold to agriculture. I think they had to let urine sit for two years ???
Can't remeber details, but it is being done. Try tracking down SCU for more info...
Cheers,
Benn

[Benn]

Hey, sorry. I am registered, just forgot to log in before posting that bit!!
:p

[Yoti]

I just found this site today and I'm enjoying browsing. The big "poo" question comes up a lot in gardening. You can pick up a good fact sheet on poo if you visit:
http://www.abc.net.au/local/perth/radio/gardpoo.htm
it gives you a nice little run down with the N,P,K content of all the different kinds....domestic only, doesn't cover exotic stuff like zoo poo etc.

My husband and I are just in the planning stages of our sustainable lifestyle, so will be listening in on your chats with interest and will have lots of questions along the way.

Yoti

[TriciaM]

Hey! What about red wriggler worm castings, ah la watered down?
Want to hear a worm story?
Re the ordinary type garden worms - in ten months my barren piece of mining slag/desert has been transformed into a green paradise with worms as big as asps patrolling my vege garden. I kid you not!
God bless you Bill Mollison for your magic mulch formulae
Regards
TriciaM

[Tezza]

This one too



Tezza

[bazman]

I use tons of horse poo, it's great stuff as it's free, I use the poo from our three horses which are organic, we use natural worming etc here.

I also use tons of poo from the race horse trainers next door, this is mowed into my grass areas and non food producing areas. It's a free resource which I would be silly to knock back.

I use the poo from here as a mulch around trees (covered with sugar cane mulch), developing garden beds, in the compost and the worm farm.

Race horses are fed high energy foods, grains, seeds etc, I often see whole seeds in it, if they gem, just pull them as they root inside the poo and it pulls quite easily.

All my chook poo ends up in the compost or worm farm, it's to hot to spread on trees.

[biofarmag]

The best form of organic matter is that you can get easily and cheaply. If you're near to chook farms, get chook poo. If you're near to stables, get horse poo. If you're near the zoo, get elephant poo. If your nearest piggery is 200-300km away, then don't give yourself the cost or the grief. Yes, chook poo tends to be higher in nitrogen. It also tends to be the highest disease risk. And anything, be it horse or cow, that eats in weedy paddocks is going to have weed seed in it's poo. That's why you need to compost it properly.

[Tezza]

Why is chook Poo so bad??????????????

Are we talking batterie hens or Totaly organic chooks .I wouldnt trust any poos really, without a bit of history on the stuff..Ever seen what horsey people give their horses.....(not aimed at you tam) i know a few horsey people,good or bad people, still use chemicals if the vet or someone tells them too.I personally Dont trust much from anywhere except my place ....Now im not a fussy person ,But with organics/Permaculture etc etc.I MAKE sure that im happy or i dont do it...no exceptions.....Too many whod give me shit if i stuffed up, or worse got pinged for chemicals when i STATE i use no.ZERO chemicals or additives....If it dont grow or survive without it i just dont grow/produce it.......Simple!!

Call me mad Call me for lunch I dont care.....


Tezza

[Tezza]

Why is chook Poo so bad??????????????

Are we talking batterie hens or Totaly organic chooks .I wouldnt trust any poos really, without a bit of history on the stuff..Ever seen what horsey people give their horses.....(not aimed at you tam) i know a few horsey people,good or bad people, still use chemicals if the vet or someone tells them too.I personally Dont trust much from anywhere except my place ....Now im not a fussy person ,But with organics/Permaculture etc etc.I MAKE sure that im happy or i dont do it...no exceptions.....Too many whod give me shit if i stuffed up, or worse got pinged for chemicals when i STATE i use no.ZERO chemicals or additives....If it dont grow or survive without it i just dont grow/produce it.......Simple!!

Call me mad,, Call me for lunch. I dont care.....


Tezza

[frosty]

Tezza I totally agree about knowing the poos history !

we keep pigeons just to get poo :lol: we also use our goat poo and chook poo and we need more so we are thinking of getting more animals ........ bringing in poo is not worth the risk

we used to use a lot of horse poo before our old horse died but we kept him chemical free ......... we used to say he had retired to become a professional gardener :lol: :lol:

next doors have horses but I wont use it because they worm plus feed chemical additives

we also have composting toilet .......... we use that on our veggies but have to be wary if we have had visitors ( which fortunately doesnt happen often ) because if they take prescrition drugs it come through in the compost ........ we want a separate visitors toilet :oops:

aquaponics would seem to be a good solution to our lack of poo problem

frosty

[biofarmag]

Chook poo seems to grow fine salmonella and other nasty organisms. Why? Dunno. It just does. I'm sure a microbiologist could tell you why. What I can tell you is a few case-histories:

(a) Chook poo is available quite readily and cheaply in some areas. Chook producers can only store X-amount of the stuff on their properties, before they get in trouble with the EPA. So they'll offer it cheaply, eg. I've heard of it going for $30/tonne SPREAD on the paddock. End result, cattle and horses wolfing down mouthfuls of the stuff when they graze.....and DROPPING DEAD!

(b) Tomato grower I know.....had a neighbour spreading raw chookpoo on the paddock across the road/laneway from his crop.....wind blowing toward him. Result? Two pickers had to be taken to hospital, blood pouring from their noses. The dust that landed on the tomatoes burnt black spots onto them.

Why this doesn't happen with horse poo, dunno. I suspect the burning was from the ammonia in the stuff. Remember that birds do poos and weewees at the same time, so the poo is mixed with wee, unlike horse poo. The cattle and horses dying though, definitely bacterial.

[~Tullymoor~]

Tezza, me mate, this is a shit of thread! :lol:

[Tamandco]

No offence taken Tezza :D . I use chemical wormers on all new arrivals to my property, so am accutely aware of the caution folks need to pay to the subject of contaminants in manure.

Tam

[Penny]

I don't know much about this subject but a friend who has a horse put horse poo on her garden and her dog contracted tetnus, which the vet said was from the horse poo. So make sure animals or kids dont come in contact or adults for that matter. contamination is generally through cuts.

[Tamandco]

He's right Penny, the tetanus bug lives in the intestine of horses. It only becomes dangerous when entering the body through a puncture type wound.

I keep my whole family, including the animals up to date with their tetanus shots.

My uncle died from tetanus, so too did one of our best polo horses. I wouldn't wish is on anybody, especially as it's avoidable.

Tam

[Ichsani]

Hi,

Couldn't resist a thread about poo..... heard some interesting gossip from one of my microbiology profs (ask and ye shall recieve biofarmag)...chookie poo is naturally VERY high in ammonia, yes its the concentrated wee thing....high levels of Salmonalla, E. coli (and Streptococcus I think) result from the conditions the birds are kept in, (from a micro point of view, conventional ag/animal practices suck butt) so these things occur naturally, but are magnified by cultural practice.....so tonnes of battery derived chook poo are a real health hazard as biofarmag pointed out (as well as the EPA).

The reason that chook poo burns plants is that when it begins to break down it starts to gas off :lol: :lol: :lol: ammonia, and later other forms of volatile gasses :lol: :lol: :lol: that do much the same thing...... if the animals that were eating the stuff died, it could just as easily be nitrate poisoning as bacterial infection. Same with the bloody noses in humans (yep, nitrate/nitrite poisoning can affect humans too)....black spots on the toms, either burning or spores of a plant pathogen contracted from the dust....( for his sake I hope its burning).

butt :lol: :lol: (feeling a little childish today as you can probably tell) when raw chook poo is spread on the ground and left the gasses also act as a fumigant, killing pretty much all of the microbes in the ground and in the poo, sterilising the soil.....but after the gassing off :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :roll: good buggie numbers (actinomycetes for example) rocket up......some promising results were obtained using this process to kill soil pathogens such as Phytopthera, and pests like nematodes, note it pretty much it kills everything though..........also weed seeds to some extent, I haven't tried it personally but maybe covering a weed infested patch with chook poo would eradicate some of the more persistant weeds (whatever that word means to you), but the bare patch would have to be sown after...

Dealing with tonnes of the Chookie stuff requires caution (I mean its tonnes of poo right?)

Other poos :lol: don't have anywhere near the same levels of ammonia as chookie poo does, so they don't burn the plants and they're safer to work with....relative of course, its still poo...

Butt a note here, (he he) chook poo from a chook house won't have anything near the pathogen levels of battery poo, nor as frosty and tezza pointed out, the chemicals....can it be called dirty poo I wonder? I think the large volumes (tonnes) of this stuff should be handeled by professional composters, for safety reasons. Handling smaller stuff that comes from off farm, if you're worried, can be done safer with a face mask and gloves, till its composted well and then its gold! Or brown.


Thanks for the poo-diful afternoon :lol: :lol: Ichsani

[Tezza]

And to think ..people say i talk a load of crap....

Thnx ichsani i feel better allready about your crappy story..


LETS HEAR IT FOR FREE RANGE CHOOKS?POULTRY

:P :P :P :P :P :P 8) 8) 8) :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :oops:

Tezza

[Ichsani]

:lol: Thanks Tezza :lol: