Spreading horse manure on hay fields?

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goldypops

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I have 2 muck heaps of manure to get rid of and my hay field could do with a bit of fertilizing to increase production! Is it ok to spread my horses own manure onto the field?. One person has told me it is fine and another has said that the horses wont eat the hay that is made off it which would be a disaster! and what about possible spreading of worms?
 
The best fields to spread manure on ARE hayfields! And do it as soon as the ground is fit to work on! Any worms that hatch and climb up the grass will die off before the hay is cut - any eggs that don't hatch in 6 months are likely to be unviable - and won't affect the hay anyway!

Once hay is cut, any eggs left on the ground will be thoroughly exposed to the drying effects of the sun if you rest the field for 4-6 weeks before grazing again.
 
Worm eggs are killed with a good managed Manure heap that heats up, alternative manure that stands in a field to break down will be free of worms and remember that new manure will take Nitrogen from the soil,so yes you will increase the humus level but stunt the flowering stalks in the hay field, so this is why you do not spread new manure.
Not for the worms or the spread of eggs.
 
We spread ours onto all our fields - grazing and hay. But we only use stuff that has rotted for at least 2 years so that it is black,crumbly and looks like lovely black compost when it is spread. Works really well for us :)
 
tantallon said:
We spread ours onto all our fields - grazing and hay. But we only use stuff that has rotted for at least 2 years so that it is black,crumbly and looks like lovely black compost when it is spread. Works really well for us :)
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My yard does the same, they make the hay and sell it and my horses never have a problem eating it :)

Xxx
 
We always spread out muck heap on our fields, they then get rested for months, before being either haylage fields or grazing fields. Our winter fields get spread in Spring and our summer fields get spread in autumn. I soil sample every year and we are finding our soil is improving every year, both in the mineral content and the pH. We are nearing the optimum level. We worm count all the horses on the yard and we always come back with Zero counts. We also make haylage and our horses love it. So I would say use it and enjoy all the benefits. Fertiliser is sooooooooooo expensive and it seems silly to buy it when you have all that natural fertiliser being produced every day
 
Don't do it personally. Hose manure is better for gardens than for pasture. For natural fertilising I get the land cross-grazed by cows or, preferably, sheep. Otherwise I use calcified seaweed. Rather than put it on our land we give our manure , which is very carefully nurtured, away to neighbours and their friends. Word of mouth has spread, so we almost always have more 'customers' than we can supply. We have now stopped making our own hay, and the haylage we use is from unfertilised land - much better for the horses!
 
Our hay crop last year was fertilised with horse manure, worms shouldn't be a problem as previously mentioned and it went down a treat with the horses! We have arranged the same for this year's crop too.
 
Thanks everyone. Might be a case of moving the front of the muck heap into a different pile and getting to the back which is about 2 years old but obviously from the replies worth doing!! Need to manage my heaps a bit better i think!! I used to have 2, one last years and one this, but somehow they both seem to have been used this year!
 
We do this but slightly differently. Our horses graze the hay fields in the winter. We don poopick but harrow once they have move. We then cut hay and leave the fields again until the horses come back. They are happy to both graze there and eat the hay
 
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