Your question doesn't have a yes or no answer. It depends.....depends on the type of compost, depends on the type of manure, depends on the overall quality of the product. Not everything bagged is great stuff, regardless of origins. There is nothing overtly wrong with combining manure with compost - many folks do it - and it can often bump up the nutrient concentration to combine the two. And there's always the possibility that what you got was composted manure, which is a different thing entirely.

Is it as good as from the farm???? Again, that depends. If you do obtain manure from a farm, what you want is composted manure - or at the very least, well-aged manure. Fresh manure contains too much ammonia (urine), which translates rapidly to nitrogen, and can burn plants. Most will also contain weed seeds, the potential for disease pathogens and is usually heavy in salts. Aging will reduce a lot of these issues and proper composting should eliminate them entirely. The flip side is that the longer a manure is aged or if it is composted, the lower the nutrient content will be but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

It may help you to make your own decision if you take a close look at the nutrient content %s posted on the bag and visually inspect the contents. The last time I helped with a garden project, bagged "composted manure" was a 'must', according to one person. The primary macro-nutrient content was listed as .05-.05-.05 (note where the decimal point is - that's 5/100ths of 1%) and the bag contents was little (if anything) more than black sand. YMMV, but caveat emptor.

Al

Manure will always have compost in it because the instant manure hits the ground, it begins to turn into compost. Finished compost is the preferred material to use in your garden. Yes, I realize that for thousands of years raw sewage has been used in the garden...still.

The manure you are getting is from a contained spot of one kind or another. For that reason it will have urine in it. When animals are out roaming the fields, manure is normally not collected (too far apart), and if it was, the urine is normally deposited as randomly as the dung. Horse manure often has more urine in it than other manures because horses are kept in smaller stalls than cattle or hogs. So it depends on what you have.

I'm not a fan of using straight manure in the garden for several reasons.
1. It stinks. I'm a believer that God gave us noses to keep us away from stinky things and attract us to "fragrant" things.
2. There are disease causing "germs" in it. See 1 above.
3. When it stinks, everyone in the neighborhood will pinch their noses for 2 weeks until the smell finally goes away.
4. If you are using as much manure in your garden as you think you need to get some nutrients out of it, you are probably getting too much urine as mentioned a couple times. A good starting application rate is 1/2 cubic yard per 1,000 square feet. If you are good with that, then next time you can adjust up or down as you want.

I got seven rubbermaid 18gal rubbermaid tubs full today. I found it on craigslist for free composted horse manure. Several other listings for free horse manure. All said they would load a pick up for free. I wish I had a pickup. Any way I combined them w/ my compost pile that's been cooking since Sep. She pointed out an area that was very dark, well aged. Some had the grey ash still to show it had been cooking. Hot composted for 14 days I wont worry the least about pathogens. BTW in the back of my van it didn't ''stink'' at all. Smelled a bit earthy, I put a tarp under the bins to keep it off the carpet.

Thanks for all the information. It helps me to know what direction to go anyway. Funny as I was driving the other day I pictured someone picking up cow patties in a field. My brain was kind of wondering! I may give freecycle a try. I haven't seen many horses or cows in my area.

Since there is nothing to establish labeling standards you will find material in stores labled "Compost", "Composted Manure", "Compost and Manure", and probably many others and they all pretty much mean the same thing, you are not sure just what you are getting. Properly composted manure, that which is mixed 1 part manure to 3 parts vegetative waste is what you do want for the garden. In the current issue of Organic Gardening magazine is an article that will tell you to age manure for 12 months before applying it to your garden soil but that is simply a waste of the nutrients in that manure and it should be composted, 1 part manure to 3 parts vegetative waste, before it goes onto the soil.

"Since there is nothing to establish labeling standards..."

From the link below...

"The purpose of this document is to provide information on the regulatory requirements for compost under the Fertilizers Act and Regulations, and describe the safety, efficacy and labelling standards that must be met in order to legally sell or import compost into Canada."

Lloyd

Here is a link that might be useful: Regulation of Compost

Actually, with commercial compost - the stuff found in bags at home improvement stores, groceries and nurseries and through bulk suppliers - there's quite a lot of regulation involved regarding content, quality and labelling requirements. Nearly all 50 states have commercial composting regulations that include labelling through their Department of Agriculture or whoever regulates fertilizers and many commercial/municipal manufacturers/providers belong to the US Compost Council as well, which further standardizes labelling, testing and certification processes. Joe Farmer cannot just bag up a bunch of stuff, slap the word "compost" on the bag and sell the result without jumping through quite a few regulatory hoops first. If they are just giving the material away - cleaning out feedlots, stables, disposing of piles of manure, etc. - then there are very few regulations involved, so buyer beware

Read the regulations carefully, there are so many loopholes that they are meaningless. These "rules and regulations" were written by the people that are supposed to be regulated, thanks the the concepts about getting "government" off the backs of businees and they will do the right thing.