What do you do with your "pile"

[LindaL]

I have over 3 months worth of shavings/manure piled up out in a certain area from cleaning stalls...and have advertised for people to come take it away for gardens and such, but no takers. What do you do with your pile?? We will have to eventually either get or rent a tractor with a scoop or pusher to push it up in to a taller more compact pile, so it doesnt take up too much space. It doesnt seem to "decompose" like it did in Oregon...

 

[stormy]

Harder to get ride of shavings then straw as it is more acidic. I have my poo pile in a place I can let it heat/mulch...turns into black top soil then I have a pumpkin farmer who comes and takes it away....he actually has a recipe for soil to grow pumpkins and is delighted with the 1/2 ton pumpkins my mini poo grew for him last year!!

 

[Riverrose28]

Well I guess I am at an advantage, as we have a tractor, but we also have a polaris ranger that I use to haul the daily manure with. I take it out to the pile and once a month hubby uses the tractor to pile high, we also add rotting vegatation or old stuff from the fridge, and work the manure pile from left to right. I'll try to explain, the older stuff is on the left and the new is on the right. We basicaly leave the old stuff alone for a year or two, then spread it over the garden or even in the pastures, then add lime, it makes great fertilizer. It actually looks like black top soil when it is spread. Some of the other farmers that have gardens come by occasionaly and get some with their tractors. One guy came by last year with his tractor and piled a lot into a flat bed trailer, as he was redoing his whole garden. Like I said if you don't have a garden you can use it as fertilizer for your pastures, you can spread it in the late fall when horses are in a sacrifice paddock, lime it, and in the spring the grass will look great.

 

[Marty]

Linda, you are sitting on a poopy gold mine. I used to sell my poop down there for all kinds of money!Sometimes I would bag in it old feed bags and deliver! Oh yes I sure did and it was part of my income! Keep on advertising because it is a bit too early in the year for people to be wanting it right now. You can also call all the nurserys, put up flyers everywhere and you'll have them coming for it!

 

[WhiteTailsMinis]

We dump our wheel barrow directly into the manure spreader every time we clean stalls - we don't have a stock pile on the ground at all.

Everything goes straight from the stalls into the manure spreader. When the spreader is full, hook to the tractor and drive it out to spread it on the hay fields or other areas as fertalization (we do not spread in pastures of course). Works like a charm - and don't have to handle it twice.

 

[Coventry Lane Farm]

We have a 100 Bushel manure spreader and we spread it on the fields, roughly 72 acres of property, about every two weeks for the crops to grow and works great for the dairy farmer that leases our ground for corn, wheat, oats, hay and soybeans.. so he doesn't have to buy as much of fertilizer.

The golf course is right up against our property line at the farm and when the people that are golfing beside our farm are out in the nice warmer weather.... they don't really care for the smell of the horse manure, especially when the the liquid manure gets sprayed on the fields that the dairy farmer brings and then makes the fields covered black in the spring before plowing the ground under .. but.... oh well..deal with it...that is part of living in the country...

I had one fellow last year buy a truckload of horse manure for his garden and said that it works great for aparagus.

 

[Connie Ballard]

We use a Newer Spreader www.newerspreader.com

We have 5 acres, 7 horses...its an AWESOME tool...dont know what I'd do without it! Had it about 5 yrs now. Spreads manure/sawdust so thin barely see it on the pasture, then decomposes nicely.

 

[LittleRibbie]

We have sort of a brush/manure pile way in the back part of the property. Pretty much everything we cut down along with all manure goes there and hubby takes the tractor out every month and moves the pile around abit. Once a month I completly strip stalls of shavings and spray bleach and those shavings are dumped/spread out in one corner of the pasture that always seems to get flooded during rainy season. Grass will never grow there but at least its not a puddle.

My sister in Ma. leases a horse for her daughter and they have to pile up manure in cans and take to dump every week....I couldnt imagine anyone having to do that with more than a couple horses.

Linda,one thing that Im sure you are already aware of is how "friggin" hot the manure piles get here in Fl. This really makes me nervous in our dry season unless we are diligent in moving and turning up the piles....I know of 2 brush fires that were started by poop piles just in our little town. scarey

 

[LittleRibbie]

Connie, I looked into the newerspreaders a couple of yrs. ago and almost bought one but decided against it at the time. I use a large flake shaving and Im not sure if the spreader would be able to "grind" it up enough and I know it may sound strange but putting manure right back in the pasture after I spend a couple days a month mucking it all out seems wierd.

I do have other places to spread it that is not pasture that might be fine.

Not attempting to hi-jack thread but what model do you have Connie?

 

[Matt73]

We're lucky. We have a manure spreader. So, once or twice/year Dan (our everything man

) will spread it over the home field (cash crops) once the ground is frozen.

 

[Suzie]

Never give anything away for "free". That is a major turn-off I find. I could not give away "free" gold. But, if you advertise a charge people think they are getting something valuable (it really is!). We pile up our black gold in piles, water it, turn it. We do spread some on our pastures too.

Could be your give away is badly timed. Most people don't think of gardens here until Feb.1. By March, I am usually turning folks away....even had one guy come clean my stalls for me to get the black gold. Now that is what I like!!

 

[Carolyn R]

I fill in all the low spots, theres alot, we live at the bottom of a mountain. I have found it is better to add and level than try to angle, grade the land.

 

[CCC]

Where I lived before this place.. we had a gorge /canal running through our property and we just dumped it in that! lol! The back of the barn was at the edge and voila! it was gone! haha!! Loved it!

now we own a small-ish property but surrounded by farm lands.. so still not too bad

my big horses are out on a road way that goes between ours and his grandfathers property through the woods all winter.. and only come in during really bad weather, so most of their manure just decomposes on that road.. it's basically only the minature horse stall mess that goes in the actual manure pile

last year we just piled it in the woods in an area we don't use.. and my DH's Grandfather scooped it up in the tractor and used it on his garden

He didn't like the results so this year we're going to just use the tractor to clean up the manure pile that is behind the barn in the early spring before it gets too muddy and pile it in the woods where it's a downgrade..eventually we are building a big barn there, so it'll be fill

 

[Reble]

We used to have to take to our over to the neighbors, and he would put in on his land.

Now, with the pellet bedding, it looks like a big pile

and than it dissolves, so much easier...

 

[~Lisa~]

I pay my trash company to come and get it weekly theygive me some big green trash cans I have one in front of the barn and one in each outside turn out. It is a bit of a pain having to drag them out in the winter in snow and or mud but it is nice to have it hauled away so worth it to me

 

[targetsmom]

First of all, we separate the poop from wet bedding when we clean stalls, so only the poop goes on the manure pile or directly into the spreader. Poop gets spread on lawn & pastures or given to my cousin who comes over with his tractor and helps himself.

What we do with the wet bedding depends on the time of year. Right now, it is extremely valuable when spread over the ice so the horses and people can walk somewhat safely. Some of our turnouts become skating rings between snow storms as the snow melts and refreezes. We stockpile it when we have good snow cover or don't need it. Not something you have to worry about in Florida, but VERY handy in Connecticut. The rest of the year, we spread the wet bedding in the sand ring/ exercise area where it makes a nice surface. We also make a pee spot outside Target's stall, which he is VERY good about using instead of the stall!

 

[Miniv]

We make a pile or piles and compost it. I have a vegie garden and Larry likes to design flower gardens, so we use some of it. We have friends who take from it too.

I agree with Marty....It may be too early for folks to begin looking into restarting their garden.

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[susanne]

Linda, I compost everything in sight, but even so, I wouldn't touch anything with shavings in it unless it was very well-aged -- they take forever to compost. Sawdust from pellet bedding, on the other hand, makes a great clay buster.

If you want to attract gardeners, let it sit for a year and then call it "garden ready," "composted horse manure" or "well-rotted manure." Many gardeners would rather use the space for garden beds, and their compost/recycling areas are often too neat and tidy to even consider a manure pile. My SIL has every square inch of their Sellwood-area city lot packed with over 300 varieties of antique roses, several hundred varieties of clematis, and hundreds of other plants as well. She has no room to compost manure, so she pays retail for hers.

All the gardening books refer to "well-rotted manure," so make it so and call it what they want!

Manure is indeed black gold, but it's HORRIBLE to find the following year that that black gold was filled with weed seeds. My horses are on dry lot, so I only have hay and sunflowers to worry about. If your pastures/corrals are weed-free, SAY IT. That's huge! If you have lots of weeds, free is NOT a very good price...

Too bad you're not still up here -- I know some people who are putting in organic gardens for schools, and they come and pick it up by the truckfull -- my sister and I use all of ours, so I sent them off to another mini farm.

Look for gardening clubs, especially organic gardeners. Have some already bagged in clean, leak-proof bags or containers for those without trucks.

Otherwise you'll just have to start gardening!

 

[Performancemini]

We also had (emphasize HAD) a small manure spreader. The adjoining Farmer let us spread it in the fall-'course we only have 6-8 minis!

The current farmer doesn't want it. We had another nearby farmer who brought his large spreader over twice a year for us to fill and he took it and used it. Now our neighbor has a large garden and pumpkin patch and he is coming for it (composts it). I guess you just have to keep looking for someone interested in it!

 

[Barbie]

Linda-

We're lucky here in that we have wetlands. We have added to our upland area by dumping the shavings out there. It's worked really well for us - when the rains come it spreads out the wealth!!! A friend of mine has a manure spreader and swears by it - she has big horses!!!

Barbie