Best manure per $ of feed

[frosty]

I think the only way we can get enough manure and know it is safe and residue free is to keep animals just to produce it

so I was hoping to get some feedback on which animals are the best value in terms of how much they eat compared to the nuritional value of their poo

we will have to hand feed mainly with a little green pick ( not much really )

we are getting at least 1 dairy goat but goat manure seems hard to collect

we have 7 chooks and the chook tractor is nearly finished but I dont think they will work fast enough

we have pigeons which we got given and I know pigeon poo is supposed to be good but again it takes so long to get enough

The old horse used to keep the garden going but horse poo is not that good and I heard horses need a lot more feed to maintain them that say a cow ........

and horses are hard on the land especially this sandy soil

we went and looked a Dexter yesterday but they are so expensive to buy and really I dont know much about cows except how to work them on horseback as in campdrafting and cutting :lol: :lol:

any advice gratefully accepted :lol:

regards

frosty

[SueinWA]

Frosty, do you have any organic meat farms near you? If their meat is organic, their manure should be, too.

Sue

[frosty]

sue there are only a few organic meat producers in the whole of the state !

the WA for western australia really stands for Wait Awhile :lol: and we are also known as western redneckia .......

down south isnt so bad but up this way most farmers are chemical mad .......

having said that one is about an hour from us and we have been up there to see them but to get any manure we would have to pick it up from the paddocks which is pretty hard ....... and as I am useless poor hubby would have to do it on his own :cry:

regards
frosty

[biofarmag]

Ma'am, I think you're more likely to die from stress than chemical damage. Even the organic grower organisations are OK about the use of composted manure, whether it's in the form of chook-poo pellets or just composted cow shit. Any minute amount of chemical remaining is broken down by microbes in the soil. The ancient residual chemicals such as DDT, etc.....they don't exist anymore. Some common chemicals are broken down (by microbial digestion) into basic elements within a matter of hours of being in the soil. By the time you've picked your capsicums or whatever, I'd wish you luck in finding even a TRACE of whatever worm treatment the cow who's crap went into your soil was treated with. You're more in danger of poisoning yourself with the salt on your chips or the panadol you took for a headache........ie. probably hundreds of thousand times more likely. And who do you know who died from chips? You'd breathe in more dangerous emissions from your car by towing the trailer you'd loaded the organic poo in out of the paddock. You'll need a LOT of animals to make enough gatherable crap to put on your garden. you need TONNES of the stuff! Just buy in some cow poo....make a big compost pile......and shovel it on your garden. You'll do fine.

Hey Frosty,
Goat manure is difficult to collect if you want to actually pick it up and move it, but it is a very quick and efficient way of direct fertilising. It breaks down in half the time of horse or cow manure and tends to disperse itself....(not clump in piles).

Goats are one of the most versatile feeders - they are probably one of the most adaptable animals you will get, and the worse the natural vegetation appears to you, the more likely they are to love it! If you are wanting to improve land, goats are the go! Either pen or tether, and rotate back and forth across small areas at a time and the difference will be noticable in a year.

I have a good variety of manures here now, and when I muck out all pens, coops or clean paddocks, just about all manure goes through the pig pen and out into new beds, or as top up. All of my plants, vegies and even the house citrus began in raised bottomless beds. That composting process is very quick and the goat pens don't add as much, with the bulk coming from the ponies and donks. However....the goat pens are fantastic because they have had regular direct fertilising. So much so, that I am actually thinking of relocating all my pens and rejuvenating another completely different area.

When I first started out, we arrived to rocky shale...I only had donk manure (from the far paddock :? ), so my original beds were based on that, mixed with mulch hay, soaked paper and cardboard, fabrics, feathers, tree cuttings, leaves, builders sand left over from the house, and very small quantities of compost from one of those little black bin type composts. There was no soil to begin with, so I made the best mix I could
AND THINGS GREW! :lol:

That method has kept me in good stead, as those original beds still function today and I can now fill pots from them by hand, or use them as starter for other mixes. The soil we have today, in the many beds that continue to extend each month alongside mucking out, has all been created, (or returned to the earth, depending on perspective). It's just the composting method that has changed alongside the arrival of more critters.

Work with whatever you have, mate. Start pulping paper, collecting anything and everything that is available, define a little area and add whatever you can. And don't forget to bung the hose in there once a week, if need be. If you throw in kitchen wastes, you'll come out one day and find a little tomato, or pumpkin shooting...Give a cheer and start another little area.

As the animals arrive, add their waste, but you don't need to wait for them. Manure is a quick and efficient way of speeding up the compost process, but it is not the be all and end all of your compost options. I like to use recycled tyres as beds, because they hold moisture in the lip and hold heat. I create mini composts and then plant straight into them. Works a treat.

The big composting systems are fine if you have effective soil to start with, and just want to convert for top soil or a soil boost ...but when you have lousy soil - and you need/want to produce foods quickly and can't wait a year - a quick compost is necessary. You need something to plant in. No matter how crappy the scientists suggest your soil is, it will improve the moment you start feeding it - so add whatever you can from within your immediate environment and see if things grow. Something will grow. The money you spend on manure could be just as well spent on potted plants, as you convert the areas around them.

It might mean you are eating a lot of corn the first year or have tons of tomatoes, but what you don't eat goes back in anyway. My garden isn't neat, and things pop up all over the place, as they often come through the 'quick compost'. I have bought 2 bags of clay converter which I was putting into holes out in the paddocks when I planted natives, but have decided they hate it and seem to do much better without it, so its just sitting there now. Also put it in the bed I attempted to dig out the back but it has had little effect, so I am building it up like the others. We have brought in chip bark because it was a quick and easy way of creating ground litter and holding moisture. It is beginning to break down now and looks a lot like potting mix when you turn it. At first I used shadecloths to create mini canopies while I got some quick growing canopies happening....Clumping bamboo makes for excellent filtered light when you bend the fronds down (that is one of my very super dooper tips :wink: ) and grows well just about anywhere if you can keep the water up.

It can be done Frosty....takes a lot of work and a lot more resourcefulness, but you can do it. Start with what you already have though. Don't look beyond your own fence until you have made good use of what you already have available.

[SueinWA]

One source of a lot of information on composting can be found online (free!) in The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins. Even if you're not into using human manure, the composting sections are EXTREMELY INFORMATIVE. there is more solid info there than any place I have ever seen. It goes into what happens with pathogens from humans & animals (includes major diseases, too) and chemicals, too. It has specific directions on how to do it.

See it online at http://www.weblife.org/humanure/default.html

Sue

[frosty]

Ma'am, I think you're more likely to die from stress than chemical damage. Even the organic grower organisations are OK about the use of composted manure, whether it's in the form of chook-poo pellets or just composted cow shit. Any minute amount of chemical remaining is broken down by microbes in the soil. The ancient residual chemicals such as DDT, etc.....they don't exist anymore. Some common chemicals are broken down (by microbial digestion) into basic elements within a matter of hours of being in the soil. By the time you've picked your capsicums or whatever, I'd wish you luck in finding even a TRACE of whatever worm treatment the cow who's crap went into your soil was treated with. You're more in danger of poisoning yourself with the salt on your chips or the panadol you took for a headache........ie. probably hundreds of thousand times more likely. And who do you know who died from chips? You'd breathe in more dangerous emissions from your car by towing the trailer you'd loaded the organic poo in out of the paddock. You'll need a LOT of animals to make enough gatherable crap to put on your garden. you need TONNES of the stuff! Just buy in some cow poo....make a big compost pile......and shovel it on your garden. You'll do fine.

sir :wink: your response is typical of healthy organic growers who have the the right idea but just do not understand the real implications minute amounts of chemical exposure can have on people who are chemically injured

so to set the record straight please excuse my rant

I dont eat chips or commerial salt and certainly cant take panadol .......

I travel in a car with the windows up and using an air purifyer and I cant consider getting into any car less than 10 years old due to the toxic atmosphere from offgassing plastic

there are some organic fruits and veggies I cant eat because obviously some of the allowed products are not benign enough for my damaged body eg apples I can eat ours but not bought ones .......

any slight exposure leaves me very sick and often results in permenent damage ( I wont go into boring details )

it is estimated that a person like me who has been exposed to high levels of toxins and their DNA damaged is 1000 times more sensitve that the "general" population

genereally the Organic industry takes the view that as their food is better than conventiopnal ( poison food as we call it ) we should be satisfied ..... during the last round of statewide locust spraying here in 2000 the associations allowed farmers to still market their produce as Organic even when aerial spraying pf fenitrothion ( banned in the USA ) had taken place within 300 metres ! this was tatally unacceptable to those of us who need residue free food !

so yes I do have a stressful life avoiding chemicals ( I should clarify that I mean petroleum based chemicals which is virtually any synthetic )

but it is inevitable that one way or another I will die from chemical damage ........

meanwhile I may sound like like a paranoid pain in the proverbial but I am not ready to go to the big organic farm in the sky just yet :lol: :lol:

rant ended :oops:

rainbow I got a little confused :oops: sorry ..... probably due to getting uppity about the above but do you mean just run the goats where we want to grow stuff first ?

Sue thanks for the link I will print it out sound slike just what we need to guide us

frosty

[biofarmag]

OK. Point taken. I didn't realise you had a medical condition.

I still think you'll find though that the levels of possible residues would be extremely low in composted chook-poo pellets. No doubt you could contact the manufacturers about this. And whatever's there WILL break down in the soil anyway. And the amounts of residue taken up by the roots of plants in even genuinely contaminated soils is basically not taken up by roots anyway. Below-ground crops (potatoes, carrots, peanuts, etc.) it's a different matter, because they have direct contact. I still honestly believe that anything in your capsicums would be less than the fumes you'd absorb from a late-model car-ride with windows wound up.

[sab]

My son has pet guinea pigs. For their weight I'd say they'd produce more poop than large animals - they probably produce their own weight in poop in a month. They make excellent lawn mowers too. We kept one in our backyard and never had to mow until a cat (or rat) killed it then the grass grew about 6 inches a month.

[frosty]

I still think you'll find though that the levels of possible residues would be extremely low in composted chook-poo pellets.

thanks I will look into them more there is a local manufacturer of a products called oragic 2000 which is chook poo pellets

Below-ground crops (potatoes, carrots, peanuts, etc.) it's a different matter, because they have direct contact. .

unfortunately potatoes and carrots are one of the main things we try and grow ....... my hubby has to have his spuds every day :lol:

and thanks for not being offended by my rant

widgenut I hadnt thought of guinea pigs I used to keep them when I was a kid and also a friend of mine used to use them on his organic farm for weed control

frosty