Depending of the age and quantity of wood shavings or straw in your aged horse manure, it may be a green, brown, or neutral. Without seeing your ingredients, itÂs hard to tell what it needs to heat more. My guess would be more greens. Probably does not need water unless it is very dry. You have piles 30 inches tall in the center probably sloping down to 0 inches at the edge. Construct a bin. A 12 ft. length of ½ inch hardware cloth or chicken wire 3 ft tall formed into a circle tied with wire or nylon ties is cheap and works well. Fill your new bin with all your stuff adding grass clippings. You should have heat in a couple days. I like to line and cover my wire bins loosely with cardboard leaving air gaps to moderate flow of moisture yet allowing air to enter. Once constructed, and if the C?N balance is close, there should be no need to keep adding greens. Any heat observed in the pile indicates that the microbes are breaking down everything in the pile and the whole pile does benefit. I like to use two or three bins. Fill #1, let it heat up and shrink, cool down, and then turn it into bin #2 and begin filling #1 again. After a couple months, bin #2 will be pretty close to finished. You could turn bin #2 into bin #3 if you wanted to. Have a look at my page to see pictures of my bins.
Bill Hill

How hot any compost pile gets at any time depends on many things but it is the activity of the thermophilic bacteria (I once could name all 4 species) that digest the compost that does generate the heat. The C:N ratio and moisture level needs to be just so, although sometimes a bit too much N and a bit not enough moisture can cause strange things to happen. On the other hand a bit too much moisture can keep your pile from getting as hot as you want, because that moisture also excludes air which those bacteria need to function.

How aged is the manure if it doesn't still stink just a little when you add it to the pile its not going to heat much I have a pile of the same materials as you the maunure was fairly fresh though it has been in the 150-160 range 4 weeks now

{{gwi:291462}}

Fresh manure would heat up more than already semi-composted manure/straw mix, if you have a choice. The size of the pieces makes a difference; four-time shredded (by lawnmower) leaves and twice-shredded grass break down much quicker than once shredded leaves and grass.

I myself would only use fresh manure in the middle of an already hot pile, mainly because of being in the 'burbs. I have used fish parts in the middle of a 130F+ pile without problems a number of times.

It sounds like your mix or ratio might be primarily responsible for the lack of a hot 'core' temp.

My simple formula is 1.5 pounds by weight, fresh cut grass; to 1 pound of dry finely shredded leaves. And I found that even the brand of shredder make a difference; the old Troy-bilt shreds finer than the Sears.

personally I soak my compost down, there are enough pockets of o2 in the material to provide the bacteria for at least a month, I turn my compost once a month, but between then I soak it down, watering to the point which water starts seeping out of the bottom. The reason doing so is because it's better for bacterial colonization. Just make sure the water isn't pooling up near the bottom. People criticize this but my pile is getting ready for it's third and final turn and in some parts its exceeding 120 degrees. so as you can see all this moisture is not slowing anything down, the only catch to this is that you cannot simply stab a garden fork in your pile and rock it around, the microbes need more o2 than that. I have build a frame with a chain link gate up on top, when i turn the pile i throw the compost on it and it aerates it real good.

in case other haven't noticed, I've adopted soilguy's method, anyone else using this?

Thanks for all the replies. I have two neighbors who supply me with their grass clippings, so I have to take them and use them whenever they get the urge to cut. With all this rain, that is about every 5 days or so. I also have some planting beds that I am prepping for next year as well, so I use the clippings in the compost about every 10-12 days.

Yesterday morning I incorporated the clippings into 4 of my piles. They ended up looking like large piles of grass clippings with a little bit of compost mixed in! But I just checked one of the piles- it's up to 130. I think it will be ok.

The horse manure I use is a mixture of stable sweepiings- manure, sawdust, and straw. If left alone in a pile by itself, it mostly composts on its own.

My method of turning is to spread out the whole pile with a garden rake, add what needs to be added at that time (clippings or moisture), then rake it all back together again. I am happy doing this- gives me a bit of a workout and adds O2 at the same time.

One more question concerning the microbes/bacteria. Don't different bacteria do their work at different temps? So if the piles only heat up to 105, or 110, or any other temp, the pile is still being worked on, just by a different group of bacteria, correct?

There different types of thermophilic bacteria that work on your compost at different temperatures.