What do you do with your muckheap?

J

JS65

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When we moved to our own place, one thing i didn't bank on was how hard it would be to dispose of our muckheap.

We are in a semi rural area, so i assumed that the surrounding farms would take it, even if we had to pay them.
NOT the case, they won't touch it with a barge pole due to it causing docks and weeds.

What do you do with yours??
Any suggestions?
Thanks
 
If you have enough land, which we do, ours just gets dumped in a corner of unused bit and burnt! Doesn't bother anyone else; However it does take time to rot down. There is also a local bloke that hire trailers out and takes it away for £50 a time ( lasts about 6 weeks in winter) Try looking in local tack/feed stores.
 
Ours is enclosed within 3ft high metal panels, and only have 2 horses in for nights in the winter. The muck heap gets burnt every summer, no-one has ever bothered about it - lots of farmers around who do similar with theirs.
 
Advertise it on you local freecycle website - I had loads of people come and collect it.

Now I leave it for 6 months then get my local contractor to come and spread it on the resting paddocks. It rots down beautifully as I use only woody pet bedding and within 6 months it is black powder that is loved by allotment holders.

You are not allowed to burn a muck heap - if you are caught by DEFRA you can be fined.
 
We are on Flax bedding and it rots within a year so hubby uses it on the gardens (he has quite large gardens) so we have 2 muck bays and have one in use and one rotting. He loads it properly so it stays compact and neat and rots easier.
 
Thats what i thought, they are very strict on burning stuff round here.

if it burns for more than a day, they get the fire brigade to wet it down, and then charge you!!!
 
Local farm collects ours twice a year. We have 5 in at night in the winter and 3 in at night all year round. It costs us £100 each time.
 
Use it on the allotment and in the garden.
Someone round here sells theirs, I'm sure they charge about £3 a sack and they always have a ready supply of customers.
 
All my muck goes into a small trailer and i keep the local allotment supplied. I normally take a load once a week. I don't charge i am just happy to get rid of it easily.
 
We have local gardners and allotment owners bring their own bags and take as much as they want, Works very well.
 
I have 2 horses in at nights from Sept/Oct until April/May, we just fill our muck heap up until end of march which gives enough time for it to be well rotted. Then we bag it all and sell it at 50p a bag- we started bagging it at Easter weekend this year and so far have sold over 150 bags- many to repeat customers from previous years, who ring up with orders.

Its pretty hard work and time consuming bagging it all, but its worth it as we used to spend a fortune having the muck heap emptied. Our only issue now is that we could do with a bigger muck heap as we are overflowing by March!! Oh and customers are fussy- there are people with muck out in bags for free just down the road from us, but many people who buy from us have been down to the free stuff but come to us as we only bag up the really well rotted stuff!
 
hubby removes it to some land he farms down the road then it get mixed with the chicken sh*t and spread on the fields but he's so busy at the moment he hasnt had time so at weekend i had to fork it all up to make some room and i'm suffering for it now
smile.gif
 
My lovely neighbouring farmer provides me with round straw bales, swaps it for all our stable manure and says that he is getting his straw back anyway.
 
We tip ours then leave it to rot for ages, it's a mix of miscanthus and shavings, then once rotted to almost soil we use it to fill in contours on the fields.
Over time it sort fo disappears into the ground.
The worst problem is the scraped out muck from the big barn, that heap (well several) are like mini mountains in the field, they have now rotted down into black soil very like the soil conditioning stuff that's so expensive at the garden centre, if I could only find someone to bag it and sell it ...
It will get spread by the JCB next time it's here, luckily the farm has a lot of slopes !
 
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