Horse Manure Compost ?Is It The Best Animal Manure?

Different animal manures have different qualities. Horse and sheep manure tend to be hot and dry. Cow manure is cooler and wetter and pig is cold and frankly sloppy! Poultry is very hot and will burn plants if put too close to them. A lot of people know this.

What isn抰 so well known is that these qualities can be beneficial for the type of food crops that the animals eat. Manure from grazers such as horses, cattle, sheep and goats is good for increasing the quality and aroma of fruits and the oil content of herbs.

Pig manure is rich in potassium and ideal for potash hungry root vegetables. However unless pigs are reared organically their manure can have a high copper content from the feed, so it isn抰 suitable for the home compost bin and ultimately your veg. (In the UK there are strict regulations about composting if you keep pigs).

Poultry fed on seeds (grain) in which proteins and minerals are concentrated, provide a manure also high in minerals and with a low carbon nitrogen ratio (approx. 8:1), which means that it is low in carbon and is rich in nitrogen. It is also rich in phosphorus making it beneficial for growing the seed, flower and fruit parts of the plant.

Specific properties of different manures can be used to improve particular sites. For example if a site is cold and damp, adding hot, dry horse manure is ideal (sheep dung is usually left in the field and fortunately the time hasn抰 yet arrived where we need to painstakingly collect it). Likewise for a hot, dry site adding cool, wet pig dung will balance the site. Manure from cattle is pappy and wet and has a cool, restrained and long-lasting effect on the soil. It is the best manure for composting purposes, as the nutrients have been stabilized in the long digestive process of the animal. It contains valuable cellulose-decomposing bacteria making it highly beneficial in a compost heap.

Any herbivore manure benefits a compost heap as they all bring nitrogen which helps the composting process speed up and therefore heat up. The amount of nitrogen varies but it will usually exceed that found within the same quantity of garden waste. It brings a host of microorganisms too. Certainly when manure isn抰 included the gardener has to work much harder to get the compost pile going.

Although cow manure might be the most perfect for your garden it tends to be much less available than horse manure the addition of which seems to keep my roses perfectly happy!