[stufe35]

A family have moved in near us who have around 8 horses.  I vaguely know the bloke and have chatted to him about the possibility of taking away his horse muck for him.

My question is whether horse muck is any good for anything. I have no issue with storing it for a year or 2 before use to allow it to rot, but is it any good then ?

I have about half an acre ploughed up where I grow veg and potatoes, and 9 acres of grass land which I graze with sheep and/or mow for hay.

Should I charge to take it away ? I know some in our area have to pay.

I sort of see it as an opportunity to get in with the guy, he has expressed an interest in buying hay from me which would suit me down to the ground, and he will doubtless need some paddock maintenance, chain harrowing etc, which I am well positioned to provide.

Any thoughts or experiences are welcome.

(ive posted this in coffee lounge to get a wider audience)

[Daisys Mum]

Yes horse muck is good just treat it as you would any other muck, I have just bought an old trailer to muck out into and the guy I bought it from wants to come whenever it is full and take it for his veg beds. Before we just used to bag it up in old feed bags and leave it at the gate, disappeared like "snow off a dyke". If you have the room you could always sell it on yourself when it is ready to be used.

[Anke]

Just make sure you know what kind of fertiliser/weed killer goes onto his fields, as a few years back people were getting deformed veg from using muck that had come of treated horse fields (and yes it had been through the horse's digestion and still was potent enough to cause damage to crops!). Cannot remember the name, but friends of ours had to stop buying it for their allotments....

Also make sure you know what this person uses for bedding indoors - if it is wood shavings it will take ages to rot down, straw also takes about two years to produce good enough muck, the likes of hemp and rape should be faster. The stuff that is collected off the fields is good, but not many people are very diligent in poo-picking.

Other than that -it's good stuff, but maybe full of weed seeds...

[Daisys Mum]

Just make sure you know what kind of fertiliser/weed killer goes onto his fields, as a few years back people were getting deformed veg from using muck that had come of treated horse fields (and yes it had been through the horse's digestion and still was potent enough to cause damage to crops!). Cannot remember the name, but friends of ours had to stop buying it for their allotments....

Also make sure you know what this person uses for bedding indoors - if it is wood shavings it will take ages to rot down, straw also takes about two years to produce good enough muck, the likes of hemp and rape should be faster. The stuff that is collected off the fields is good, but not many people are very diligent in poo-picking.

Other than that -it's good stuff, but maybe full of weed seeds...

   Mm never thought of that Anke, I suppose it's because we don't fertilise our horse paddocks and only ever spot weed kill with something like Grazon.

[sabrina]

My farmer friend takes mine once a year, says its great stuff but due to having the Shetland ponies we don't fertilise . I keep a small muck heap behind the building that I use when its too windy to open the double doors when mucking out. this muck heap I keep and leave to rot down for 2 years. Great stuff for my veg plot.

[RUSTYME]

Apart from what fertiliser he uses and pesticide/herbicide , also check what he worms his horses with and when . What goes on the ground  goes into the grass and then into the animal that eats it and thus into the muck . It then can go into the soil on the veg plot and then into the veg and then get dished up as  your daily 5 portions of veg .
I won't use muck from anywhere else now due to chemical pollution .

[Fleecewife]

  The weedkiller which caused the deformities in veg was I think an Aminopyralid.  Anyone who read what I wrote before please ignore it - senior moment 

When animals have been wormed with an Ivomectin type wormer, that persists on into the muck, through the heap and on into the soil.  I don't know if it also persists into your food, but it certainly kills off all your local earthworms, as we discovered to our horror when we first moved here many years ago, and bought muck from a neighbour's cow sheds.  It took a while for the worm population to recover, several years.

I agree about horses bedded on shavings - allow a couple of years extra for that to rot down.  If you put it onto the soil before it is fully rotted, it will actually take nitrogen out of the soil for the decomposition process, so a bit counter productive.

But if you are happy about the muck fitting all those criteria, then it's great stuff for the garden.  As for asking for payment to take it away, I haven't a clue, but whatever you decide this year is what you'll be stuck with forever.  For doing cultivations, make sure you charge now or your new neighbour will think what a lovely helpful person you are but will expect you for ever more to do his work for nothing out of the goodness of your heart.

[honeyend]

In past years I have had no trouble getting rid of my muck. I use chopped hemp or rape straw so after about 3months its just about composted and doesn't need stacking. I only have charged if I have to bag it up, usually I put ads up and its gone within two weeks.
 Because I have so much of the stuff what flower beds I have I spray with round-up then mulch with them with muck so I never have to dig, the worms do all the work.

[ellied]

My arrangement here is a deep litter straw bed in the barn and my hay supplier will dig it out, often for free and make a heap up the field, then bring a scoop or two back from the 2yo heap which I use for my garden and local gardeners to collect off the yard.  Free that is, IF he can do it in his own time, which might be June through to December,  depending on when it suits him.  If I need it done to a particular timescale, then I expect to pay, which is usually an hour of his tractor time but he throws in travel time for that.  And I try and add a hay/feed delivery on top which reduces his fuel costs for the job as he is 3 miles away by road.  He doesn't always accept payment, but I always offer and the deciding factor is usually to do with how convenient the timing is for him.

I likewise don't charge folk to take away what I have in heaps, so long as they do it themselves.  Even if I paid for the bedding and paid to have it dug out and stacked and returned back to the yard for collection, if they do the work they can have it, butI can't help load.  Folk seem to come back and apparently the local village has a huge flatworm problem so they take my manure to restore earthworms to their gardens and always seem to find plenty when they're bagging up - as the chooks have discovered   What goes on my own veg beds and around fruit trees is likely to have no worms in it as they spread it for me and often demolish entire beds to make dustbaths after that, but the heaps are always wormy and they love it when scoops get removed

I don't fertilise my land (native ponies) but do have it sprayed 50% each year or more, for ragwort and other weeds so that chemical plus occasional ivermectin wormer, may be in the muck.  When I have a big extra heap like I do this year (after a flood washed a lot of topsoil down where the ring feeders were so hay and slurry and mud mix scooped up and heaped to dry/rot) I am happy to respread it on my own land to replace the nutrition and as it is being grazed by the same stock then they've no extra chemical to deal with that they've not eaten already. 

So for the sheep/hay acreage I'd be happy to use it personally, if I were you.  And since I also use my own for my fruit trees and veg plots, without visible damage to the crops, I'd not worry about the rest either, but that's up to you.  Unless you are registered organic and eat only organic you are probably taking in a lot more than whatever comes off horse manure.  If you are registered organic, however, you possibly can't use the manure anyway.  And I know a few farmers will take all kinds of straw, hemp etc bedding but not shavings due to the extra time/space requirements so perhaps that might be your threshold for deciding on the appropriateness of charging.  You could also park a trailer down there for him to muck out into assuming you have a spare - again common on stable yards, so there is no additional work involved for you in collecting it, you just arrive with an empty and swap with the newly filled one.

[DartmoorLiz]

The best stuff in horse manure is their urine so the poo pickings (while better than nothing) are not the best.  Straw stable waste from well fed horses is best. 

[verdifish]

If you burn wood or coal as fuel you could always dry it and burn it ! It burns smoke and smell free and pound for pound it burns aswell as wood but its free with little work to get it to point of burn !

[Buttermilk]

I would charge your diesel costs as this both gives a charge that can be understood and is the biggest variable cost for you.