Chicken or Horse Manure
Q. I’v
e heard you talk about the benefits of horse manure.What is your opinion of using chicken instead of horse manure? I was told recently chicken is stronger than horse.
A. Chicken manure is superior to horse manure but needs longer aging and less is applied. Well-aged chicken manure makes an excellent vegetable fertilizer, especially since it contains more phosphorus and potassium as well as nitrogen, than does horse manure.
Though dried, bagged chicken manure used to be readily available, today It is difficult to find chicken manure in some areas. Dried bagged chicken manure is already aged and can be applied directly to the garden. I recommend it in my book especially for fertilizing lawns but one must take the same precautions with it as one does with commercial fertilizers in order not to burn the lawn.
I have a source for fresh chicken manure. Is there some way to age the manure at home without stinking up the whole yard? Thanks.
You could age it in a pile or in a trashcan with a plastic sheet over the top. However in the rainy weather we are having if you spread it thinly on top of the ground over the roots of plants such as shrubs and roses the goodness from the manure would be washed into the ground to feed your plants and the smell would dissipate fairly quickly.
I live in Simi Valley. Where can I purchase chicken manure. Lowes and home Depot dosen’t carry it. Is there a commercial fert company around
There are a number of chicken farms in Simi Valley that might be a source for you of chicken manure for your garden in Simi Valley. You might also ask them who carries dried bagged chicken manure because they must have to get rid of theirs some way. In our area (San Diego County) Dixieline sells aged, bagged chicken manure. Try your local Armstrong Garden Center or True Value Home Center & Building Supply(805)527-7184) , Elegant Garden Nursery 805/553-0565, or Nature’s Best Nurseries (805-529-0731), for the bagged product. If none of these carry it ask who does. Ace Hardware might carry the dry pelletized, non-smelly variety that is used as lawn fertilizer.
Thanks so much for your reply. It was very helpful. Cliff
Big help, big help. And superltaive news of course.
I live in southwester Ohio. Where can I purchase composted chicken manure in bulk?
Stephanie
I suggest you ask at feed stores if they know where you can purchase composted chicken manure. Also,
phone local chicken ranches and nearby farms and enquire.
Pat, I just want to clarify…can I put fresh horse manure at the base of my apple, avocado, peach and citrus trees? Or should I age first? I will definitely age for my vegetable garden, not place in fresh, correct?
Thank you!!
Thank you for giving me the chance once again to clarify this point. All types of manure must be aged prior to working them into the soil, but if you are using manure as mulch, that is laying it on top of the soil without working it into the ground, it can age right there, in place. Just make sure you allow it to age for 3 months before digging it into the soil. Also, you should never combine manure into beds where root vegetables such as carrots are to grow since it can cause them to split. As someone who grew up on a farm I speak from experience. After my family emigrated to America from Yorkshire England, my mother bought a farm in Bucks County Pennsylvania and that’s where we lived during the Second World War. My parents were early organic gardeners. My mother and step-father were followers of Rodale who was right there in Doylestown near where we lived and where I went to school. We had many animals on our farm and if we could avoid it, we did not pile up manure into a smelly pile. We put our cow manure and straw from the milking stalls in the barn over the roots of our raspberries and we dumped the chicken manure straight into a manure spreader and spread it onto our fields and allowed it to age right there, in place. In spring before my brother plowed the fields prior to planting corn, that’s when the manure got added into the ground and by then it was aged. In the sheep pasture the sheep manure was just left there to age on top of the ground and feed the grass. The cow manure from when the cows were outdoors grazing took care of the cow pasture. During winter of course we had to pile up some manure to age under a shed and then it was spread on the fields and vegetable garden in spring and plowed in. Aging manure on top of the ground has some great advantages, since if you pile up your horse manure, for example, and age it in a manure pile, then when it rains, much of the nitrogen from the manure will run off into the ground under the manure pile and go straight down into the ground, ending up eventually in the ground water. You could cover it with a tarp of course and that would preserve some of it. If, on the other hand, you spread the horse manure around and place it on top of the soil, for example over the roots of your apple, avocado, peach, and citrus trees, all that goodness (mainly coming from horse urine) will go down into the soil right there washed in by rain and irrigation and it will gradually l feed those plants. I know many gardeners who spread fresh manure all over their gardens in fall allowing it to age on top of the ground and during the winter the rains will wash some of that goodness down into the ground. I have done this myself when I was younger and stronger and could haul manure into my garden, so I have seen how good the results have been. When I was younger I rode a horse all day once a week and brought a garbage can of horse manure home each week and spread it around my garden. (To make it funnier, I was in those days driving a big gold Cadillac and had that garbage can standing upright in the trunk of the car with the top held down by a bungee cord.) I spread the horse manure without aging it even over the roots of roses and it never burned the plants. I have sandy soil which is a benefit of course. I wish I could still spread manure like this today since the soil in my whole garden was much better in those days. So if the dogma these days says my method is incorrect, my answer is that is just dogma, not based on experience or facts, but based on the fear that a few idiots won’t use their brains and thus will have bad results from not washing their harvested crops before eating them or from digging the fresh manure into the ground. Some of our California UC advisors have ideas about manure that differ from mine. They have to follow the party line and say that manure adds too much salt to the ground here in California where our soils are alkaline already, but my point is that in winter when we have our rains those salts are washed away. My feeling is that we were given a head on our shoulders and we need to figure things out for ourselves and when we see results we may know some things that are not in the common dogma. For example, for many years right here in Southern California I have seen gardens, even with clay soil, greatly improved by applications of manure. Years ago I knew a gardener who lived next door to a horse owner. Every week he went over and got a few wheelbarrows of fresh manure. He simply put it on top of the ground as mulch over the roots of his citrus, avocado, deciduous fruit trees and everything thrived. After a few years of this treatment the soil in his garden was friable and full of earthworms, the guy could just put his hand down into it and show you handfuls of gorgeous black loam without even digging, and that guy was living on top of a mesa with what was originally hard clay soil and close to the beach as well. The only time you need to age manure is if you are going to dig it into the ground like a soil amendment and then yes, you need to pile it up first and age it—or you can do as I am suggesting and put it on top of the ground and dig it in later. (One word to the wise, don’t ever dig under fruit trees or all the fruit will fall off. All fruit trees have surface roots close to the top of the soil and these are what take in the nutrients. If you dig up and damage those roots this will have serious consequences.)
Pat, everything I read from you reminds me of an old Choctaw neighbor I had many years ago. Before he passed out of this world he taught me how to grow a garden using chicken manure and marine fish/shellfish scraps, and how to kill fire ants with household vinegar and soap. His methods work so well that I use no chemicals in my yard or garden.
You speak from experience, not from hear-say. Many so-called experts speak only from book-learning, disseminating false and destructive information. My old Indian neighbor often said that while some folks grow old and wise, others just grow old.
What a delightful comment. I am deeply honored by what you have said and I hope I will always live up to it. It is encouraging to hear things like this. When I was a child I imagined I was an Indian and I lived that way in my imagination for several years. During those early years of growing up in great gardens on the edge of the moors in West Riding, Yorkshire, England, my charming grandmother, Lady Hattie Fisher-Smith, a well-heeled American from Boston who had married an English widower and mill-owner with seven children, told me she had Indian blood. Whether this was true or not I never discovered and it might have been something else altogether, but the belief that Indian blood circulated in my own veins filled my very English childhood with many adventures. After emigrating to America in1939 we lived on an organic farm in Bucks County during the war. This taught me a lot about practical gardening and farming. While still in England I met Gray Owl, who was a guest in our house while on a lecture tour. He was the author and naturalist who was credited with saving the beaver in Canada from near extinction. Despite his marvelous outfit of buckskins, moccasins and long braids, I sensed he was a bogus Indian—(Years later it was revealed that he was actually an Englishman masquerading as an Indian)— but he was a colorful character, nonetheless, and he taught good things about respect for nature and the environment. I am so glad to hear you use no synthetics or pesticides in your garden.
Hi! Thanks so much for all your help. I was wondering what you thought about cow manure? I used to use it in my garden with good results untill I was told that it is too salty. Is this true, or does it basically have the same rules as chicken and horse manure?
Cow manure is often salty because today these animals are raised in such unhealthy and crowded conditions and salt licks often fall on the ground and get mixed in with manure, but if you have fast draining soil (decomposed granite or sand) and if you irrigate enough or if you spread the manure in fall and rains are adequate this is really not a problem. I have sandy soil and have used bagged cow manure in my garden often and found it an excellent and cheap soil amendment. In clay soil, however, the salt can be a problem because it builds up in the ground and doesn’t wash away easily. If you get truckloads of cow manure from a dairy farm where you know how the cows are being raised and not crowded into a feedlot, that is fine too. I knew a lady called Alice Menard who amended her garden soil that way once a year. She lived in Lakeside California. Alice knew the owners of the dairy and they kept their animals clean. They cleaned out their stalls daily and they didn’t allow salt licks to fall onto the ground and get mixed with the manure. Alice used to top the ground all over her garden with this manure every August. She let it age there lying on top of the ground throughout hot weather. Then she dug it into the ground in October and then after a couple of weeks she planted her vegetables. She spread this truckload of manure not only over her large vegetable garden but also all over her flower beds and over the roots of her roses as mulch. Her garden was on a slope and it was old agricultural land, but basically clay, as I recall. The one caveat here is that Alice Menard was gardening this way in the 1950’s through the 1980’s. Water was more plentiful and Alice watered her garden a great deal. All the watering was done overhead from hoses attached to sprinklers. Alice’s plants were all very healthy and vigorous. Nothing had been burned by manure. All the nitrogen had been washed safely into the ground, appropriately diluted so it couldn’t burn. Also the cows at this dairy, owned by Alice Menard’s friends, were not fed any hormones. That too is a concern for some folks. My own feeling, however, is that hormones in manure will not end up in vegetables grown in ground that has been fertilized with manure. Plant chemistry is very complicated and so is the chemistry of the soil. All organic matter changes form in the process of rotting in the ground and then traveling as a nutrient into roots and up through the magical interior of a plant to create, for example, a head of broccoli or an onion.
@pat i have some fresh chicken manure i age in empty rice bags 25kgs and tie the top and i put it outside the rain for 6month, can i use it straight away to plant my vegetables?
You allowed enough time to go by, but a closed system works differently from one that is exposed to oxygen. Aging manure inside a sealed plastic bag is not the correct course of action for home gardeners. Part of the point of aging manure is to let some of the raw nitrogen and ammonia escape into the air and/or the ground. The proper way to age manure is on top of the ground or in an open pit. You could always cover it loosely with a tarp in warm weather and then remove the tarp when it rains. The rains will help wash that excess “hot” nitrogen into the ground, but rain falling on the outside of a sealed plastic bag has no effect on its contents. I think you are going to find that the stuff inside is extremely smelly and still hot thus could cause plants to burn. Scientific tests have shown that anaerobic digestion of manures results in increasing the amounts of methane gas and ammonia it contains.
Pat Welsh. You do a wonderful job in keeping us informed regarding Manures.
Just think a few years ago shoveling this stuff was a long Full Time Job
Again Thanks
please help: I had four plants of long stem roses, that stood 12 ft high, and they were ferterlize with chicken menure and they have gone dormant, many leaves have turned yellow, what can I do to bring my roses back. I have always used blood fertizer before.
In june 2014 I had 4 plants, like 4 bouques of long stem roses that stood 10 to 12 ft in my yard.
Now the flower are very very small, they look like tiny roses. PLEASE HELP ME
It sounds as if hot, un-aged chicken manure was used on the roses and thus the roots were burned with too much nitrogen. Chicken manure is very strong and thus often referred to as being “hot”. It must be used only when well-aged and in appropriate quantities. It could be that your roses are not dead and will survive. Scratch the bark with your finger nail and see if it’s still green inside. If your roses are growing in well-drained soil, it will be easier to flush the burning nitrogen from the soil. If they are growing in clay it will be more difficult. But in either case it can help to apply gypsum to the ground and then water deeply to send the nitrogen to deeper levels. In sandy soil, a wetting agent might be more effective than gypsum. One cheerful thought is that If your roses die, you can pull them out and replace them in spring with better varieties, such as All America Award Winners. Do the research and pick out the very finest. Many times folks grow roses that they simply bought on a whim while far finer varieties are available. After enjoying florists long-stemmed roses in the house, some gardeners stick them into the ground in September and they root. Just cut off the faded flower, make a hole with a pencil, dip the stem into rooting compound, stick it in the ground and keep damp. During the winter, protect from frosts. (An upside-down mayonnaise jar can do the trick.) In this way they get a whole row of long-stemmed roses in colors and varieties not generally sold in nurseries.
What words of wisdom I am reading from you. Thanks.
Most of it I learnt from the gardeners’ working the estate grounds at Glyndebourne in Sussex. I was 14 years of age and would pick their brains about raising vegetables. It was wonderful going down memory-lane.
Again Thank You. Marie