Managing Manure

 Managing horse manure can seem like a burden especially in the winter months. But, that manure is a valuable resource for your farm. You can use it as a supplemental fertilizer for your pastures and hay fields and cut costs on buying commercial fertilizers. The key to being able to use this resource is managing it correctly. 

• Never store manure in a low lying or wet areas because the moisture will cause nutrients to leach out out of the manure and you will be losing valuable resources for your fields. Also, leaching can be harmful for the ground around the manure pile and water downhill or down stream. 
• If possible try to store your manure a good distance away from your barn to reduce fly and pests for your animals.
• It is a good idea to turn your pile or mix it every once in a while to distribute the heat in your pile and turn those fly larvae that are hatching into the heated center and kill them before they become adults. 
• Always take a soil sample on your fields routinely, about every 1-2 years, because most of the time horse manure contains a lot of bedding, sawdust or straw, and those materials take time and nutrients to break down. Some of your soil Nitrogen could be fixed or unavailable to plants while breaking down those stemy and woody materials. Also, adding lime to your manure pile or spreading lime on your fields after soil testing will help break down materials faster because your soil pH will be more stable. 

Scooping manure and mucking stalls is never a fun job, but since it is a necessity when keeping horses why not make the manure work for you in return.  

Management Tools for the Spring Transition

Management Tools for the Equine Owner

1.     Don’t graze too soon! It has been a long winter and hay supplies are dwindling but remember to wait for your pastures to reach a proper grazing height before turning horses out for long periods of time. Feeding hay a little longer come spring time can be a pain and time consuming but it will be worth it in the end. Your grasses are also trying to recover from winter and need all the help they can get to become bountiful again. Horses are hard on pastures because they have a full mouth of teeth unlike ruminants so they tend to rip grasses out of the ground at a higher rate. So, if you reseeded in the fall to have a more productive pasture for this year don’t shoot yourself in the foot by allowing your horses to pull newly established grasses out of the ground because they don’t have an adequate root base yet. Also, March and April are a great time to fertilize pastures, just be conscientious of temperature and weather. Consult with your local Extension Agent for further guidance.

2.     To further enhance your pastures production for your animals, adopting rotational grazing practices are extremely beneficial. Rotational grazing helps grasses rest and regrow for higher yields, helps deposit manure more evenly across the area reducing parasite loads, and helps make horses graze more evenly across an area so there is less spot grazing.

3.     Finally, one of the best management tools is to drag your pastures after moving horses off of an area. This helps break up the manure piles which in turn spreads out nutrients and helps reduce parasite activity. Some cheap drags can be made from a few old tires and works great to break up manure piles and not damage your forages.