Manure that is piled and left alone will decompose slowly. This can take three to four months if conditions are ideal. It can take a year or more if the starting material contains a wide carbon:nitrogen ratio (as is the case when manure contains wood chips).
Horse manure can also be used in throughout the year and needs no special treatment. Just scatter it over your garden area and work it into the soil. It's as simple as that! Horse manure can be a great way to give your garden a boost.
The more you turn, the faster you reach the end result. Turning the pile can be done by hand or with a front-end loader. Increase the surface area by chopping, shredding, or breaking up the material speeds up the composting process. If the compost lacks oxygen, it will have a bad odor.
As a rule of thumb, applying manure to your garden should be made at least three months prior to full growth, meaning the best time to add manure to your garden is in the late autumn or winter.
(See more below on hot bed gardening). To use raw manure that has not been composted then dig it into the soil at the end of the season and over the next few months it will break down to some extent and add valuable nutrients for the spring plants.
Manure that is piled and left alone will decompose slowly. This can take three to four months if conditions are ideal. It can take a year or more if the starting material contains a wide carbon:nitrogen ratio (as is the case when manure contains wood chips).
Can I Plant Straight Into Well-Rotted Manure? Yes. I used well rotted manure on No Dig beds and in containers and plant straight into it. I also mix it 50:50 with sterilised loam to make my seed compost and it is a very good seed growing medium.
It should take around three to four months to finish, perhaps longer in the winter. The volume of material piled up will decrease in size by about 50%. You will know when your compost is ready when the material looks evenly textured, dark and crumbly like dirt and no longer like the original material.
If it does not smell and it started off as manure, it is ready! I think if it is sweet or none smelly and crumbly then it's ready to go - takes about 6 months apparently for any chemicals to dissipate ... this from answers to my own recent questions about manure!
This is a good environment for microbes and earthworms that can start turning the material into soil. That's why you need stay on top of the watering if you plan on using fresh manure as fertilizer. Make sure to cover the manure with some type of mulch to keep the pile damp too.
Studies have linked manure-eating in adult horses to those that are either underfed, or are fed diets that are low in fiber. This means horses that are not receiving enough roughage each day may start to eat feces to get the nutrients (i.e. fiber) that they are lacking.
Shred everything
Smaller materials break down faster than larger ones, and making sure everything is shredded is also a great way to create pockets of air within the pile to help aerate and speed up the composting process.
You can use manure onsite by spreading it as a fertilizer on an open area, pasture or field. You can also haul manure offsite for fertilizing or composting. Use caution when spreading manure on pastures grazed by horses. Don't spread manure on pastures if there are more than 1 horse per 2 acres.
Vegetable root crops such as beets, carrots, radishes, and potatoes are particularly sensitive to adding horse manure. Salad greens are another vegetable type that can be damaged or burned by applying horse muck to the soil.
To improve soil it is usual to apply about 5-10kg (11-22 lbs) per square metre (yard) which is generally about half to one 15L (3gallon) bucketful.
Horse manure
Horse manure has a higher nitrogen and nutrient content than cow dung. Moreover, horse waste contains significantly less water than cow manure; therefore, it can include up to twice as much nitrogen when dried. Horse manure requires composting or aging to kill weed seeds, larvae, and pathogens.
Adding too much manure can lead to nitrate leaching, nutrient runoff, excessive vegetative growth and, for some manures, salt damage. And using fresh manure where food crops are grown poses risks for contamination with disease-causing pathogens.
You can dig the composted manure into the soil, use it as a mulch, or spread it on your lawn to enrich the soil. Horse manure is rich is nitrogen so it's especially beneficial for nitrogen loving plants including leafy green vegetables, garlic, brussels sprouts and rhubarb.
Turns out, the “fuzz” is actually Cobweb Mold. It's a fungal growth that thrives in high levels of humidity combined with high temperatures. It's not dangerous to the horses and has absolutely nothing to do with nutrition or gastrointestinal health.
Something that makes great fertiliser is horse dung - a new item which presents itself from a horse every 20-25 minutes. Amazingly, admins also have the ability to adjust a server's poop rate with the command "dungTimeScale".
Spring is the preferred time to apply manure. Forage or hay crops generally provide the greatest flexibility in planning land application operations.
Since diet affects the color of a horse's manure, you can expect it to be anywhere between green, brown or black. A horse that eats more dried grass will have browner manure, eating lots of alfalfa can produce a greenish tint, and adding in beet pulp may give the manure a reddish tinge.
Most recipes I've seen advise using either cooked manure or manure composted at temperatures high enough to kill disease organisms. Also, most recipes call for putting the manure into a bag, then soaking the bag for two or three days as nutrients seep from the manure into surrounding water.
Horse manure compost can be used just as you would use any other composted material in your growing areas. What is this? Traditionally, gardeners dig well-rotted manure into their soil. However, we recommend taking a no-dig approach, which helps keep the soil ecosystem intact.