I have to tell someone who understands....

[MontyJ]

I fully understand your excitement. Several years ago my SIL worked at a horse stable and her husband drove a huge dump truck. He delivered 20 yards (in two trips) of horse stall fodder to me for free. I was bursting with excitement...until it arrived. The stable used pine sawdust and shaving for the bedding and that is what most of it was. I would say it was 85-90% bedding. I had two lawn maintenance companies dumping all of their grass clippings next to that pile for over a year so I could have enough greens to compost all of the bedding. I have some pics of the entire mess somewhere. I'll see if I can find them. I hope you don't suffer the same fate and get tons of bedding.

 

[vfem]

I am totally excited for you too!

It's nice to have a group that understands, huh?

 

[digitS']

Nothing like having just the right stuff for direct garden application, Nitty'. And, quality compost material isn't easy to come by, not by the truckload.

My compost pile used for direct soil-incorporation has been 18 months old. I will use younger stuff for mulch and much, much younger stuff (green material) right in the bottom of a planting bed with 8+ inches of garden soil put right back on top of it.

If'n the load shows up at your place in the condition MontyJ describes, you may have to think about its use in 2014 instead of this year. I had a truckload once like MontyJ's. MontyJ was willing to go into a lot of material handling and turning, turning, turning with those grass clippings. He must have had tons of compost!

Sometimes, a horse owner just didn't understand the word "muck!" Okay . . . fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, I was still willing to use synthetic fertilizers in my compost at that time. Here was about what my "remedy" amounted to: advice from Ohio State University, Composting on Horse Farms. Here is a quote, "Add about 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulfate per ton of horse manure/sawdust mix."

Organic method? Just realize that the nitrogen in the synthetic fertilizer is between 21% and 34%. You may need to use 3 times the pounds or more if you are using a high-nitrogen organic fertilizer. Organic lawn fertilizer or composted chicken manure are good choices and I've used both in my compost with good effect .

Steve

 

[nittygrittydirtdigger]

Yep, I knew I was in the right place to share my excitement. And I got some good advise, too!

The poo is already aged a bit, and it has some straw bedding in it of course, but it looks really good. The gal even posted a poo picture on her freebie craigslist posting. It's nice and crumbly. They have LOTS of horses, so it's worth it to them to bear the cost of delivery, rather than find some other way of disposal. And they are pampered-prize winning horses, so this isn't just your every day horse poo poo

We plan on spreading a thick layer over the garden, then watering it down quite a bit. That should give our typical early spring freeze/thaw cycle a good opportunity to break it down. Of course the spring rains will help, too. Our soil is pretty alkaline, so this should add some much-needed acidity.

Is it planting time yet?

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

:rose

Yeehaw! It must be extra nice not to have to pay for poop!

Ya know, poop is one of those things that can be a true hand over fist operation. If ya have animals of the right species that are able to eat basically free, or heck, even hired out goats that are PAID to eat, then ya get the stuff PROCESSED FREE inside the animals, and the animals deliver it right in the pen, and if ya do only a little cheap or free advertising, you can get folks to come and shovel it into their pickups, and PAY YOU to take it away, ohbyjeebers, that's money for getting it, and money for selling it!

Reminds me of the garbage place in Ukiah. You haul the stuff there yourself, pay them so you can drop it off there, they take the stuff and sell it for recycling!!! The owners of that place own some island in the Caribean...well, I'm pretty sure they do...

How lucky you are! They even hauled it to your place for you!!! They must have tons of *** on their hands

it sounds like what we have to do on this side of the coast. most cities around my town make people pay for their city garbage bags. but since i live in the same town that has the landfill we get to have our trash put into wheeled totes once a week and hauled away for free. if you have to take any excess trash in bags to the landfill you need to get a sticker for $1.75 per bag so you can haul it down to them. we do have once a month and 'excess trash' day that we don't have to buy stickers for the bags, we can also put out large items and have them hauled away by the garbage men or by those that pick and scavenge for metal.

 

[MontyJ]

Yep, I knew I was in the right place to share my excitement. And I got some good advise, too!

The poo is already aged a bit, and it has some straw bedding in it of course, but it looks really good. The gal even posted a poo picture on her freebie craigslist posting. It's nice and crumbly. They have LOTS of horses, so it's worth it to them to bear the cost of delivery, rather than find some other way of disposal. And they are pampered-prize winning horses, so this isn't just your every day horse poo poo

We plan on spreading a thick layer over the garden, then watering it down quite a bit. That should give our typical early spring freeze/thaw cycle a good opportunity to break it down. Of course the spring rains will help, too. Our soil is pretty alkaline, so this should add some much-needed acidity.

Is it planting time yet?

If it's already composted and straw was used as bedding instead of sawdust, then you have certainly hit the mother lode! Maybe you can place a standing order?

 

[OldGuy43]

Lucky me! As I've said before, I live on a horse ranch. When I need some I just go out in the pasture, and load it up.

 

[MontyJ]

Hey Steve,

I found a few pics of the operation.

This was the first load:

Here is the second load being delivered. That is a 10 wheel dump truck:

Here is how I composted most of it. I ended up with nine 30 foot windrows each about 4 feet high and 5 feet wide.

The process was:
The manure was piled in one spot and the grass beside it with a gap between the piles wide enough so my tractor and trailer could fit between them. Using my trusty garden fork, I put about 4 inches of manure on the bottom of the trailer then added 8 inches of grass clippings the sprayed with water. I repeated the process until the trailer was full. Then I took the trailer to the end of the windrow and removed the tailgate. Using the fork again I dugout the compost lasagne from the back of the trailer which allowed it to mix pretty good. It was a constant operation. Every night after work I would come home and find another large pile of grass. I would mix until the grass was gone, often until well after dark. Then the next day I would come home to another pile of grass and do it all over again. This went on for several weeks. I was never so glad to be rid of anything in my life as I was to see the last of that bedding go into the windrow.

 

[Greenthumb18]

Monty,
Wow, in that second picture is that the steam rising from the heated pile of manure? Its already starting to breakdown and heat up.

Looks great!

 

[MontyJ]

Yes that was steam, but it was short lived. As I said, there was a tremendous amount of pine sawdust in it. The horse urine was probably the greatest nitrogen source and that's what caused the heating. After maybe a week or so, the entire pile went cold because all of the nitrogen was used up. At first I tried adding bags of urea, but mixing a pile that large by hand was impossible. The only alternative was mixing it with grass clippings one garden trailer at a time.