[rainie]

My pony is in a stable at night, on a bedding of reasonably small woodshavings.

I take the manure out which people on our local allotment have. I leave the wet in and top up with fresh shavings.

In the spring I will scrape the dry shavings to one side, then empty the stable out of soiled shavings. Rather than chuck it on the farmers muck heap, will it be helpful to dig it into poor allotment soil which seems to be producing produce but hasnt had anything added to it for years. If so, how much, a lot or a little? Would it be better rotting down for a year then adding. Or mixing with other composting materials.

[shokkyy]

If it's several months' worth of wet shavings, there's going to be an awful lot of ammonia in there I'd have thought, and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing to put on the soil.

[AlaninCarlisle]

We use sawdust as bedding for our ponies and I heap up the soiled stuff with the manure for several months and then used it as a soil conditioner. The rotted sawdust works wonders on heavy soil.

If your discarded bedding is mainly half-rotted shavings then I'd be very careful about how you use it as it could end taking goodness (possible nitrogen) away from your plants as it finishes the rotting process - as I found to my annoyance when I over-used some on some rhubarb

I wouldn't worry in the slightest about ammonia in the stuff. Ammonia's mainly nitrogen anyway

[solway cropper]

Large shaving do take quite a while to rot down AND they use up nitrogen in doing so. I mix wood chips from the shredder with lawn clippings and a sprinkle of chicken manure and leave it for a year. End result is a decent compost which I mix with other stuff or use straight as a mulch.