The valuable by-product, manure, is often considered a waste or, at best, a nuisance to dispose of.Yet most horse properties, including small ones, can use this manure to their advantage, it just takes a little timeand planning.

Manure Management Options
Several options are open to you to manage any manure that is collected from stables, yards and paddocks. Theseoptions include:
• collected manure can be composted to spread later on paddocks and gardens or stored to be sold
• collected manure can be spread on paddocks immediately, sold or given away without being composted
• manure can be put in special garbage containers from a waste disposal company and removed regularly from theproperty.

The third option should be a last resort as it is an expensive solution and can only really be justified insituations where the amount of horses kept on a property is far more than the property can support with pasture. Atypical example would be an inner city riding school or racing stable where there will be very little or no pastureand many horses kept stabled or yarded in a relatively small area. Even on this kind of property it still may bepossible to compost and then sell the manure, in this way turning a liability into an asset. In an urban or cityarea, compost is an even more valuable commodity. If this is not possible, try to find a company that will eitherbuy or remove for free your manure on a daily or weekly basis.

Manure Storage
Provision must be made for proper handling and storage along with a plan for effective utilisation of manure.Decomposition of manure starts as soon as it is passed. Decomposition rates depend on handling and storage methods.Stored horse manure should be kept compact and moist to prevent excessive loss of nutrients. Manure left in a looseheap loses nitrogen rapidly to the atmosphere in the form of ammonia, is available to flies for laying eggs and canend up contributing to nutrients entering the waterways via run-off. Because you will need to build storagefacilities for your manure, you may as well consider composting it.

Composting Manure
Composting manure is the best way of turning a liability into an asset. Composting is a method of speeding up theprocess of decomposing that occurs naturally to everything organic. By providing the correct conditions, the micro-organisms and bacteria are able to work to their full extent.

Benefits of composting manure and bedding:
• Compost makes nutrients such as phosphorus more available to plants as it changes the organic matter intosubstances that more readily form humus in the soil. Nitrogen in particular, instead of being highly soluble (andtherefore more able to be washed into waterways) as it is in fresh manure, is converted to a more stable form thatis more slowly released. This slow releasing of nutrients means that nutrients are available to plants (albeit indecreasing amounts) in the seasons after application. With regular topping up of composted manure the need for otherfertiliser is very low or eliminated altogether.
• As well as adding organic matter to the soil, compost improves aeration and water retention. This means that insandy soils compost helps the sand to hold water (compost can hold almost twice its own weight in water), and inclay soils compost loosens the packed clay by opening up pore spaces which allows water and air into the soil.
• When soils are able to hold water for longer they do not dry out as quickly in a dry period and therefore do noterode as quickly from the wind.
• Improved soil feeds and encourages earthworms.
• Compost gradually changes the soil pH in soils that are either too acidic or too alkaline.
• The high temperatures achieved when composting kills weed seeds, parasites and pathogens such as bacteria, virusesand fly eggs and larvae.
• In properly enclosed compost systems the breeding ground for flies is also reduced (compared to an open manurepile), further reducing the fly problem.
• Odours are also reduced especially in a covered bin.
• Composted manure has roughly 40–60 per cent less volume and weight than non-composted manure.

Once manure is composted you are left with a material that is high in organic matter and is similar to potting soil.This material is valuable and should be used on the property for improving soils in paddocks and gardens. Of courseit also has a sale value – but why sell such a valuable commodity unless you already have excellent soils?

To compost manure, you must pile it properly, keep it moist, and either turn it over several times for one or twomonths or establish a system of aeration. Various techniques can improve and hasten the composting process.Processing methods can be kept quite simple, or be quite sophisticated, depending on the desired condition of theend product and the time needed to complete the composting process.

A composted pile is hot when it is working and returns to air temperature when it is done. It is crumbly, smellsearthy, is dark coloured and looks like potting mix.

Manure Use
Ideally, composted manure should be used on the pastures to replace some of the nutrients that grazing horses takeout of the system. Unless the property is supporting many horses relative to the acreage (i.e. many horses beingkept mainly confined to stables/yards), the amount of manure produced should be able to be spread back onto thepaddocks.

Fresh manure should not be spread on pasture currently grazed by horses as it will increase the risk of horseparasite infestation. This risk can be reduced, however, if the paddock is spelled for approximately four monthsafter the manure is spread or is grazed by other types of stock for a period. A hot dry spell, or a cold snap alsokill worm larvae especially when the manure is broken up and exposed (such as after harrowing).

Composted or fresh manure should be applied no more than 2 cm thick on pastures and no more than three to fourapplications per year. Spread it only during the growing season when it will be used by the plants. Remember thatgood pasture can utilise compost (or fresh manure) much better than bare soil can. Never spread manure on water-saturated ground and never spread or store it on land subject to flooding.

If there is too much manure to spread on paddocks (i.e. on a property with a large number of horses in confinementdue to lack of pasture), then the surplus can be used as fertiliser on the gardens. If there is still too much itcan be sold, traded (i.e. in return for eggs or vegetables) or given away as a last resort.

Fresh, partly or fully composted manure can be marketed to home gardeners, nurseries and crop farmers. Nurseries arethe most likely customers for large volumes of less-than-completely composted manure and home gardeners a goodoutlet for smaller quantities of composted or aged manure.

Fresh manure or compost can be sold at your farm gate. However, in certain areas there are more manure producers(horses) than buyers. This system works best when you are situated in or near suburbia as there will usually be ahigh demand for manure for gardens in these areas.

Paddock Manure Management
Manure in the paddock must be managed in some way to reduce the incidence of ‘horse sick’ pasture. There are variousstrategies for dealing with paddock manure. What you do with it depends on the size of individual paddocks, thetotal pasture area on the property and the amount of horses kept on the property.Collecting And Sweeping
The main reason for removing manure from a paddock is to reduce the number of parasitic worms present in thepaddock. In larger paddocks collecting manure becomes an ineffective practice. It can reach the stage where moretime is spent collecting manure than doing anything else. Some properties go to the extent of buying expensivemachinery (sweepers) to do this. However, this still requires an operator and time as in order to be effective(against parasite infestation) manure must be removed either daily or every two days at the most. If manure is leftany longer then the benefits of removing it decrease.

Once collected, this manure can be composted and should be returned to the paddocks that need it the most by eitherspreading by hand or with a machine.

In very small paddocks daily removal of manure is necessary as harrowing becomes more difficult in small spaces anda small paddock will become inundated with manure very quickly. In small bare paddocks the need to remove manurebecomes even more important if it is not to run into the waterway. Avoid keeping horses in bare paddocks due to theland degradation that this will cause.

Spreading Manure
In paddocks, manure can be spread by hand with a shovel from the back of a trailer or by a manure spreader. It isnow possible to buy small manure spreaders that have been designed for small properties. These machines can be towedbehind a ride-on mower, four-wheel bike, utility vehicle or small tractor. If you plan to spread fresh manure dailythen the machine can be taken into the stables or yards and manure loaded straight in. If you are composting first,then compost can be put into the machine from the compost bin.

Harrowing
Harrowing gives a quick return of fertiliser (manure) to the soil and causes horses to graze a paddock more evenlyby eliminating ‘’roughs’ and ‘lawns’. Larger paddocks should be harrowed periodically using pasture harrows.Harrowing involves dragging either a purpose-built pasture harrow or an improvised harrow over the ground with avehicle.

Dung Beetles
Australia and New Zealand both have native dung beetles. However, these are adapted to the manure of native animalsincluding birds that have small pellets or piles of manure rather than large piles such as those produced by horsesand cows. Some years ago the CSIRO introduced dung beetles that have evolved to deal with such manure into Australiafrom other countries (such as Europe and Africa). This has been a huge success in Australia. New Zealand also hassome introduced species of dung beetles.

There are various types of these beetles and it is usually best to have several types as they tend to work atdifferent times of the year or indeed will work alongside one another for a better result. Dung beetles fly to afresh pile of manure each evening and usually either burrow down into the soil underneath taking the manure withthem or they roll balls of manure to a nearby burrow that they prepared earlier. Either way the result is hugelyadvantageous in many ways, as shown below.

• By digging tunnels into the ground the soil condition is improved as compacted soil is aerated and rain water canpenetrate, this also allows plant roots to penetrate more easily.
• The ground is cleared which enables the grass to grow in that spot straightaway (rather than being trapped under apile of manure).
• The nutrients in the manure that they take down is able to be used by the soil immediately as the process ofdigestion by the beetles makes it more available.
• Fly numbers are reduced as dung beetles remove their habitat.
• Horses will graze in this area rather than reject it (see Grazing And Dunging Behaviour OfHorses) because the manure is taken underground.
• Dung burial also reduces the infective stages of gastrointestinal parasites (‘worms’) of horses.
• The dung beetles save you an enormous amount of time that would otherwise be taken up with picking up manure orharrowing.
• They create the right conditions for earthworms by loosening the soil. Earthworms are also vital to the soil so itis very important that they be encouraged.

Who would have believed that a small insect could do so much!

Dung beetles will only work on fresh manure that is deposited in the paddock (either via the horse or when freshmanure that is collected from yards and/or stables is spread daily on paddocks). They will not work in a compost binor on manure that is composted and then spread on paddocks. When dung beetles are working, manure in yards must bepicked up daily otherwise that evening the dung beetles take it underground.

This article is an abbreviated version of one of the chapters of the book Managing Horses on Small Properties(Jane Myers). The subject of manure management is of great interest to horse property owners as manure is seen as anuisance when in fact manure should be regarded as useful and even essential if you want to use sustainablepractices to manage your horses and your property.

Disclaimer: While the author and publisher have taken all appropriate care to ensure the accuracy of this article’scontents, no liability is accepted for any loss or damage from or incurred as a result of any reliance on theinformation provided in this article.

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