Spreading your own muck heap on your own land?

[FayeFriesian]

Hi All,

Im just wondering if anyone does this? whats the positives & negatives?

Its quite old, approx 8 years old maybe more. Its very broken down! Is it a good idea to spread it on our own fields? or will it lack what the ground needs? (Just thinking a horse gets rid of everything it doesnt need from the grass they eat?)

I know theres a risk of worms, but we have a worming programme and people have said that the heat kills off any eggs?

Whats your thoughts?

 

[ILuvCowparsely]

nah i don't pay to have it removed takes to long to go into soil re puts worm back if you haved wormed recently

stinks also . cant afford to loose the grazing for it to go into soil i would rather pay for the correct fertilizer for the fields

 

[Miss L Toe]

If it is 8 years old it should be compost, so spread on your fields, but lets hope there is no plastic or string in it, also your worming poison will be in it, but should be well spread out and hopefully denatured by now.
One advantage is that you are returning nutrients to the soil, its called re-cycling!

 

[jackessex]

i like the idea of this also,we compost ours down for our veg plot,but was wondering about getting it spread on our summer grazing when they come of it,would that be the right time to do it??i was thinking it would have whole of winter to pull down.

 

[be positive]

It is fine to do so if well rotted ,worms egg etc should not be a problem.
But it is very rich and the last time I spread on my land I had Laminitas the following year, it affected several horses that had never had it before and they were not fat .

 

[Bosworth]

Yes I spread my muck heaps twice a year , then leave those fields for a further 6 months before use. It is improving the quality of the pasture quite significantly.

I paid for some specific composting worms to be sent down to add to the muck heap and I add in the grass cuttings from my lawns and leaf mulch in autumn. I turn the muck heap regularly with the tractor and it breaks down to some fantastic black powder. I run a worming programme and every horse is worm counted so we have little danger of equine worms within the muck heap and the heat generated in there will kill off any should they remain.

I have my fields soil sampled every couple of years, add lime as necessary and muck spread every year, my ph is rising towards the optimum for grass of 6.6 / 7 from where it was at 5 from when we bought the place. The mineral content is also improving in line with equine requirements. If my soil sampling shows we need additional minerals and nutrients, we add the specific ones needed. At the moment the regime we use is working well and the quality of the grazing is moving quickly to where I want it to be. The cost of fertiliser is prohibitive now, rising from £250 to £1350 in 4 years so we have had to make the decision not to spread fertiliser.

 

[lazybee]

I do spread my own muck. I have a muck spreader. I leave it for a year first to compost. If you spread it when its fresh the lumps (road apples) bake hard and take ages to break down. What I actually do is: cut my hay and muck spread afterwards. The spreader does a great job of breaking it down and looks like a fine layer of peat. I don't spread the muck collected after they've been wormed as the wormer kills all the earthworms too. This is put on a separate pile. I take the horses off for a couple of months afterwards and put them on another fields. The next year the process is alternated with the other fields. If any worm eggs are lucky enough to survive after a year composting would be extremely lucky. Any that are still potentially alive certainty die of exposure to sun and wind etc You can't really be worm free the only way is to stick with a regular worming programme.

 

[YasandCrystal]

we spread our muck with a spreader in the autumn so the winter frosts will break it down. We depoo the fields all summer and then spread in winter.

The formal advice is to let a muck heap with straw in it compost for at least a year but pure dung can be spread sooner. It is also hailed as good practice to fertilise with your own manure 'what you take from the land should be put back'.

If I had more land I would not depoo, but would just harrow it in regularly, but you need very large acreage imo to do this.

I use herbal wormers and these do not affect the dung beetles of which we have loads or the earthworms and I use wormcounts to ensure my horses are worm free.

Your paddocks will really benefit from 8 year old compost!!!

 

[Dry Rot]

If you heap muck, it will heat up due to bacterial action. As the temperature warms, the worm eggs either hatch (thinking it's a nice humid summer day!) or are destroyed. If the eggs hatch, the larvae die because they can't get a new host.

So, yes, horse muck is an excellent fertiliser. Just look at those patches in the field where you were a few days late lifting the poo!

Last year I applied the contents of my muck heap that must be at least ten years old. I also applied the normal application of artificials. My "hay" yield went from 35 4x4 bales in 2010 to 83 4x4 bales plus another 100 small bales in 2011. I put hay in inverted commas because the crop was so heavy I did not trust my ancient hay making equipment to be able to handle it all and got contractors in to put it into haylage!

So, no danger from worms if given time to rot down (I don't bother to aerate) but watch out for very rich grass and more of it.

 

[Miss L Toe]

I paid for some specific composting worms to be sent down to add to the muck heap and I add in the grass cuttings from my lawns and leaf mulch in autumn. I turn the muck heap regularly with the tractor and it breaks down to some fantastic black powder.

I have my fields soil sampled every couple of years, add lime as necessary and muck spread every year, my ph is rising towards the optimum for grass of 6.6 / 7 from where it was at 5 from when we bought the place. The mineral content is also improving in line with equine requirements. If my soil sampling shows we need additional minerals and nutrients, we add the specific ones needed. At the moment the regime we use is working well and the quality of the grazing is moving quickly to where I want it to be. The cost of fertiliser is prohibitive now, rising from £250 to £1350 in 4 years so we have had to make the decision not to spread fertiliser.

You are obviously taking this seriously, quite right!
Did you go for organic fertilisers, which presumably are pretty expensive but you should need less, I wonder if you could lime with dolomite, which is magnesium carbonate, at this stage you are not needing much lime, if any, I know there is an optimum pH for grass growth, but I am not sure if it is essential for horses as many natives do well on the acid heathlands with short fescue species.
I am wondering if you could manage the grass to grow herbs which would give the horses a better choice, herbs seem to extract various minerals and make them available in an organic way, I am no expert, but I find my horse will always zoom in on herbal treats .. the new shoots on hawthorn hedges, cow parsley, seeds and flowers, are his favourites at the moment. I am a great believer in hedgerow herbs, look how well the traditional gypsy cobs did in the olden days [don't start me!]
There are companies who analyse feeds for horses [barefoot performance and so on], I think this might be more diet specific, as the grass will not necessarily take up the minerals from the soil in the same proportions as in the soil, if you see what I mean, also there is a lot of interaction in the soil minerals [cue three months of geochemistry]
I assume you need more grass because of land shortage, you could over-sow some wild white clover in patches, this will increase N [root nodules], and thus grass growth, see lawns full of clover, how green they look!
Just a few thoughts, I wish my YO had not sown a whole new field of what looks like a monospecies of grass, I daren't ask, "Is that Ryegrass I see before my eyes?"