Was this manure really composted, meaning that it was mixed with 3 parts vegetative waste, or was it simply allowed to sit around and age?
I have seen manures that were put aside to age, where they loose up to 50 percent of the Nitrogen and 5 to 20 percent of the P and K, act as you describe and the only solution I have found for that problem is to add adequate amounts of organic matter, vegetative waste, to the soil.

Thanks kimmsr! I'm sure this cow manure was put aside to age.... I have amended small amounts of this cow manure (in my current fall vegetable garden) with chicken manure/pine shavings to help alleviate this problem & plan to do the same for this raised bed in the fall. Guess it just struck me as odd that this would occur after using tons of both cow & horse manure in years past without encountering this issue........

It's probably a temporary condition until it breaks down into the soil. You might need a mulch on top to counteract this problem. You can use just about anything from wood chips to straw to grass clippings. A mulch will hold in moisure, preventing the crust from forming as fast. The mulch will also act as a sponge to slowly let water into the layer beneath and prevent runoff. Finally, it will sink into the manure and break up the surface so it's more irregular, which will also help water soak in and not run off.

People report this problem with compost, peat and all kinds of fine organic materials.

Thanks toxcrusadr for your insightful input! My chicken hobby produces a mulch/compost of manure & pine shavings. I only have 8 hens, so this mixture is probably 75% pine shavings with some DE in the mix also. I'll put a layer on & see if this will help.......

My guess is that the manure you used in past years was mixed with bedding, such as straw. However, I think the manure you describe does not include bedding material, and it may be from cows that eat mostly corn, as opposed to grass.

kimmr keeps beating this drum about, as he calls it in another thread, "improperly managed" compost from animal wastes and how if the moisture is not managed (i.e. it's left to sit and not covered) it can lose 50% of its N and some of its P and K. AND he acts like that is a bad thing. I disagree.

I know someone locally who has a business that produces what I would call "boutique compost" from horse manure and stall waste. It is all that kimmr dreams of in "proper management" and moisture control. This product costs $16 for a 40 pound bag!!! Let me assure you that the vast majority of folks that are reporting good success with composted animal manures aren't getting "properly managed" compost because they can't afford to pay what it costs to actually produce it.

I compost between 1 and 2 tons of horse manure and stall leavings a month. I use it on my own gardens and share it (for free) with my friends. For me the end goal is to be rid of it, so I'm using it as mulch several inches thick. I have clay soil that is rich in nutrients, but is greatly helped by the addition of the organic matter. I don't want to maximize the nutritional levels because I have lots of it and want to use it thickly and don't really need to add PNK or anything else according to soil testing.

It's a little like saying 12-12-12 fertilizer is bad because it's not 24-24-24 fertilizer. Different levels for different application. More importantly compost is not the same thing a fertilizer and to start bemoaning it because it's levels of PNK misses the point of it.

None of us using my "improperly managed" compost are complaining about the results!

This post was edited by subk3 on Sat, Aug 24, 13 at 15:34

I was composting before I knew what it was called, but I'm very new to the science of composting (the hows & whys)........ I'm also old & easily confused! LOL

But yeah, I'm thinking I fall under the heading of "improperly managed" compost user but it still seems to work......

subk3, you may want to look at university studies that tell you how nutrient loss is affected by how manure is stored, there are many. I have posted links to several on these boards in the past that you apparently have not looked at nor learned from.

I have absolutely no argument that nutrients are loss and/or retain based on how the compost is stored or handled. I am sure you are right.

I just don't know why I should care when my goal is to use a large quantity of it and my soil tests show that I don't need as much or any of those nutrients. Why do I want to retain a higher level of Phosphorus in my compost when I know the Phosphorus level in my garden is already high?

What you are discussing is how to MAXIMIZE the nutrients by management and I'm telling you that my garden doesn't want/need the maximum. The labor and expense of maximizing those nutrients makes the finished product so cost prohibitive that most people who have had success with manure are having that success with less than maximized compost.

I already have issues with too high amounts of Nitrogen on certain blooming perennials and I've got you telling me I'm "improperly managing" my compost because the finished product is lower in Nitrogen than it could be. If I followed your advice on how to manage my compost I'd have no blooms and no tomatoes. Made your way (or those smart university researchers' way) my compost would be so rich I couldn't use it. Theory is great...until it doesn't work in the practical world.

The real issue with loss of nutrients from aging manures is not so much that the nutrients are lost from subsequent use as a fertilizer, but rather where they go and end up. Where animal manures are concentrated and stored it is a concern for water pollution.

There are really two issues with aging manures and one is where do those lost nutrients go? Some are lost to the atmosphere and some are lost to the ground water or creeks, streams, rivers, and lakes around where this manure is stored. This is the pollution that occurs.
Since most analysis of manures report nutrients in fresh manure people applying improperly stored manures are not getting what they think is in that manure. While numerous studies tell us that improperly storing manures results in a large loss of nutrients none of the charts that list nutrients of animal manures reflect that.

If you actually had to manage tons of manure every month you would realize there are so many more issues than just two! I think that is the problem here, kimmsr and TXEB have all this book knowledge about manure and how it SHOULD be managed, but don't seem to have much of a grip on the realities of actually managing large quantities of it.

If analysis and charts are using numbers that reflect the content of fresh manures instead of composted or aged manure, I would suggest to you that since the overwhelming number of us out here dealing with manure are NOT doing so to maximize the potential nutrients (and could care less if we do) that perhaps the problem is that the charts are wrong--not that we are doing it wrong. Scientific information that isn't done to reflect the reality of the world just becomes nerd food--which is only slightly more helpful than useless.

Nice deflect on the ground water issue. Instead of answering the question of why I want maximum nutrient content in my compost that is going on gardens that don't need the nutrients you deflect to ground water. Gee...in all the posts about the problems of "improperly managed" compost this is the first time I've see it brought up. But for the record I don't see much different in the "pollution problem" if it's sitting in a pile losing nutrients into the ground or moving it 100 yards and it's sitting there losing nutrients into the ground that happens to be my garden.

Most farm sources of manure for the average gardener aren't going to be void of "vegetative waste." Horse manure especially, will almost alway include a significant amount of bedding--in my experience you are more likely to get horse manure that has too much additional vegetative waste, not too little! You might also want to add that the "3 part vegetative waste" is a comparison to manure without water content--it is a misleading to most people who don't consider what a huge portion of manure is made up of water.

Excellent thread..I have to come down with sub3k on the issue of large contributions of manure from livestock..It is not considered an asset and more of a pain to deal with than an opportunity for organic compost..I'm just playing around with leaves and grass clippings and I am already thinking that turning, watering, monitoring temps etc. is more trouble than it's worth..farmers and ranchers are involved in heavy manual labor and endless jobs taking care of daily chores...probably not too worried about less than optimal quality of their compost..

Just my observations...points by all posters are well done.

Theory vs. Reality has always been an issue. I'd not become too worked up over it.

Lloyd

subk3...I detect some notes of regret/jealousy as you report...

" someone locally who has a business that produces what I would call "boutique compost" from horse manure and stall waste"

Of course it would require time/space/equipment...but you too might be able to produce some "Boutique S*#t" also. If you just store manure, either in a pile or spread on your garden, it will eventually become "rotted manure" not compost. How and where you store it may or may not be environmentally unfriendly.

Fear not men/women of science.

If you actually had to manage tons of manure every month you would realize there are so many more issues than just two!

Absolutely! But, if you are in a situation that has to "manage tons of manure every month", then chances are likely that you're in a permitted operation that has a mandatory containment plan.

I really don't care about whether you get the max nutrient benefit possible for the subsequent application as a fertilizer. Manures provide appreciable benefits for soil other than their potential as a fertilizer (NPK). Personally I am a fan of the composted or "well rotted" stuff. But, I don't have much of a supply option that I can trust where I live so I generally go without.

Regardless of how you prefer to use manures, I will remain concerned about the effects of groundwater and surface water pollution via neglected or mismanaged manure storage. That has implications that can reach far beyond the site of storage or use.

This post was edited by TXEB on Fri, Aug 30, 13 at 18:40

1-2 tons per month is not a great threat to the environment compared to factory farms where tens or hundreds of tons per month are produced. I actually heard years ago that CAFOs near the east cost (the Carolinas and Virginia for example) are affecting nitrogen levels in coastal waters, not just through runoff, but from the huge amounts of nitrogen containing gases (NOx, ammonia, etc.) that are emanating from their sewage lagoons into the air, the being deposited through rainfall. CAFOs don't WANT to collect all that nitrogen, they actually want to be rid of it, and as long as they're allowed to discharge it into the air, they're happy to do so. That's where I have to agree with kimmsr's point. It's actually an insane way to manage nutrients in the grand scheme of things.

But, this has little to do with the rural horse barn.

tox - no doubt 1-2 tons per month is a much smaller threat. But still, it is not a negligible threat, and it deserves appropriate management to assure that runoff isn't a water resource contamination issue.

Can't argue with that. :-]

Sigh...one horse poops approximately 50 pounds of manure and pees 6-10 gallons of urine a day. I go through approximately 2000 pounds of bedding a month. Add in a little uneaten hay . My teeny, tiny operation has a max of 5 horses stabled 12 hours a day. You can do the math. A couple tons of month is nothing in the large scheme of things agriculture. I'm not even on the radar screen to be a permitted operation! You can also rest assured that while my compost heap is not "properly managed" I'm still one of the few people I know that manage it at all!

I have absolutely nothing against science, I just think it needs to be relevant if we are going to trumpet it. Nor am I "jealous" of my boutique composting friend--knowing how hard he works I still question whether he's going to have a viable product at $16 a bag!

lonmower, never fear, my "less than optimal" compost (and considering the temps I get it IS compost and not rotted manure) is being used in my gardens and others and is much appreciated! I just don't appreciate this constant drum beat that I'm "doing it wrong" when I get great results that are better for my situation than if I did it "right." (And if you consider how my manure management works within the scheme of how I manage my farm I'm knocking it out of the park!)

At the end of the day it needs to be repeated that compost is not fertilizer and using fertilizer type measurements to base a quality analysis isn't necessarily that meaningful.

subk - my one and only concern is the runoff/leachate. Nothing else.

I had a client years ago that had 21 horses in her stable. It was her hobby (showing), and that of her children as well. She wasn't a breeder/seller, just a well-off enthusiast. She had 3 full-time grooms. Her manure containment plan consisted of collecting it daily, stacking it in a field in a location that the state environmental folks had approved (no runoff to water threat). It sat there for a time, then it got hauled off by some guy who sold it. It wasn't much of an issue, just an assurance that it wasn't going to cause a problem.

The guys I've felt sorry for were the WI dairy farmers who had their manure quarantined and barred from removal of the farm on which they were kept due to herbicide contamination. As far as I know that was resolved, but for a while it left a bunch of farmers in a real bind.

There are many articles available, online, about the proper storage of animal manures, for both small and large scale operations. Most are concerned with the potential of contamination of rills, streams, creeks, ponds, and lakes but you can also find concerns about ground water contamination., as well as the loss of nutrients due to improper storage where those animal manures are to be applied to the soil.

Here is a link that might be useful: storage of animal manures

I'm on a first name basis with the scientists who work for the non-profit that advocates for the the health and welfare of our local river and its watershed. I have had them out here on more than one occasion for various issues related to river health. Trust me my "improper management" isn't a contamination problem. That's only in your theoretical head.

TXEB--I know exactly what chemicals my hay has been treated with. My experience with three different hay sources in the last year is that it really hasn't been difficult to get that information.

Still waiting for a response to my question about why I would want a higher PNK content in my compost if the soil in my gardens isn't dificient, but needs the organic matter... (chirp, chirp...)

subk - you lost me. It's not about the hay or what it's been treated with. That's a totally different issue. It's about, primarily, nitrate and phosphate in runoff waters. Let me assure you, in many areas it's a real issue. It is NOT theoretical. But don't worry - at 5 horses I doubt you ever come up on anybody's radar so long as you don't do anything ridiculous.

BTW - I never suggested that any of your management was improper. I have no idea what you do with your manure.

This post was edited by TXEB on Sat, Aug 31, 13 at 20:57