[Salkeela]

Avoid it if he beds on sawdust or woodchips

Now here I will disagree.... shavings anyway (haven't used woodchips) still make good stuff - just they may take longer.

Here's a story about the year we grew fantastic toms on pony-shaving-manure.

One year we had a little pony that had to stand in every day in the summer (out at night) due to sweet itch.  We deeplittered the pony on shavings on a porous floor.  Come autumn he lived out full time and due to time pressures the old bed wasn't dug out - but it stayed moist due to the wet winter and the porous nature of the floor.

Next spring I finally dug it out and put it straight into large blue barrels (sawed in half lengthways) covered with 10cm of builder's sand and stuck these in our lean to conservatory.  Planted the tom seeds directly in the sand and just let them grow.  Well once they hit manure they really GREW - and we got as many toms as we could eat from the bushes.  

Can't remember the variety we used..... just that it worked!

[WG.]

Here's a story about the year we grew fantastic toms on pony-shaving-manure.

No doubt Sal, but tomatoes can be grown in just about anything since they are usually being liquid fed.  Wood shavings would cause nitrogen robbery when dug into open ground for general cropping.

[frazzy]

i,m worried i dont use horse manure i only use leaf mold and rooster pellets do you think my veggies will suffer with out horse manure

[muntjac]

nopes .....just bung in loads n loads leaf mould  for building up the humus content n feed ya chicken pellets .if ya can get manure of any kind its good for the same thing  

[Eristic]

There is some truth lots of fiction about the shavings and sawdust in manure. While it is true that large quantities of sawdust plied on the soil surface will shut off the air supply beneath causing severe troubles to the infrastructure, and it is also true that woodchips deplete nitrogen levels in the soil when decomposing, the volume of these ingredients are typically small and well dispersed in horse manure.

The little kids working for their free ride or whatever scoop up the mess and leave the bedding. What gets scooped up is eventually a good old mixture of droppings, bedding and urine mixed with hay. Any bedding in this mixture be it sawdust, chips or anything else cannot posibly deplete nitrogen from the soil while it is absolutely saturated in the stuff.

If anyone is in any doubt about manure my I suggest they get a bucketfull of the hottest freshest stuff and tip it on an empty plot, rake it down and watch the weeds.

Will they die! Will they hell!

[frazzy]

i do use the straw out of me chooks as well   thx munty

[Salkeela]

Here's a story about the year we grew fantastic toms on pony-shaving-manure.

No doubt Sal, but tomatoes can be grown in just about anything since they are usually being liquid fed.  Wood shavings would cause nitrogen robbery when dug into open ground for general cropping.

I just fed them water!

I agree if not rotted (ie still obviously shavings) then shavings are not good, but they do rot and they and the manure they hold are then effective..... honestly!

[Sideways]

There is some truth lots of fiction about the shavings and sawdust in manure. While it is true that large quantities of sawdust plied on the soil surface will shut off the air supply beneath causing severe troubles to the infrastructure, and it is also true that woodchips deplete nitrogen levels in the soil when decomposing, the volume of these ingredients are typically small and well dispersed in horse manure.

The little kids working for their free ride or whatever scoop up the mess and leave the bedding. What gets scooped up is eventually a good old mixture of droppings, bedding and urine mixed with hay. Any bedding in this mixture be it sawdust, chips or anything else cannot posibly deplete nitrogen from the soil while it is absolutely saturated in the stuff.

If anyone is in any doubt about manure my I suggest they get a bucketfull of the hottest freshest stuff and tip it on an empty plot, rake it down and watch the weeds.

Will they die! Will they hell!

Thats good to know. The stables at the rear of my house is home to seven horses, the muck corner is 10ft across and 3ft deep, thats alot of muck!  

[Trillium]

I've used horse muck in the past when it was available (sadly, no longer) and I never used it fresh in the garden - too strong. But it does become mild quicker than cattle or chicken. And shavings or straw in it didn't matter. True, they do deplete some nitrogen for their own breakdown, but by ratio, it didn't matter all that much. I stored what I could get and soon as it no longer stank or when I saw ground worms in it, as soon as 3 months, it got dumped into the garden, both as mix with the soil and as some top dressing where needed most, like tomatoes.  

[muntjac]

ok  lets fix this horse muck and any other manure question sorted  once n for all .... whatever your adding its humus and fertiliserrs organic and chemical in 99% of places , horse muck isnt a patch on cow manure . firstly its dodo content is tonnes lower than cows  ,its nitrogen content is massivley lower . but its bulk in fibre is higher .  why simple because horses dodo apples in a stable usually on its own   where cows are kept  by the dozen  in a byre  or open barn and all they do is mill round tromping the dodo which is soggy sticky stuff into the straw  they are bedded on . the cow manure is  rich in nitrogen with all this chit tromping etc  it cooks even in the barn having been put down at the beginning of winter and not touched other than to have more straw piled on top of the previos lot .
this is done on some farms once a week sometimes twice . then when spring comes the cows are let out to pasture and the now heavily manured bedding is dug out with a tractor mounted fork bucket  and piled high  the stuff cooks even more to the point where i have cooked eggs in it and seen it catchg fire .
Horse manure with load of shaving s flakes or  chipped up medicated straw  and  its couple hundred apples gets  piled high and it cooks but no where like its cow counterpart   so ok use horse manure if that what you can get its fine to use if its not got masses of wood shavings in .if it has leave it one side and let it rot down for a couple years .i have a stable pile on the estate its been there 6 /7 yrs and its still got discenrable chips in it .i use it for tubs and hanging baskets  because it holds water better  .i also collect the apples from the pastures and pile them up . but you with horse manure only, add stuff to it  chicken shed stuff even look for people with racing  pigeons in your area ask for the dodo  , any rabbit keepers can if they wish use the rabbit dodo straight away and its really the only dodo you can . but add it to the manure heap  as  an activator . now cover the lot with a thick black tarp or even a pond sheet to help cook it . these new green recycling places can turn this stuuff they collect into compost in 6 mths using activators and covering it so why cant you . incidently horse manuere does not burn plants anything like cow manure does when its applied .

hope this helps with making straw and chit into the best stuff ever for gardening all hail the * pile  

[Salkeela]

hope this helps with making straw and chit into the best stuff ever for gardening all hail the * pile  

Hear hear!

[shaun]

what about pig poo ?

[muntjac]

same as cow poo  but it burns .most pigs today are kept in fields so you dont get the chit  .pigs dont dodo on thier beds so it doesnt get mixed with the straw unles its bad husbandary .what muck is on it is carried in from outside and usually mud   but if you can get it fresh mate put it in ya heap n turn it in.  

[shaun]

well i emptied piggy fletchers midden and the last time it was empty was 4 years ago i did buy him a bottle of whisky for it but thinking about it i did him a favour  

[muntjac]

now that would have been good stuff mate