The horse manure is probably not stable/mature compost. I would use the 2 cu. ft. that you have for the raised bed. Add mixing in soil if required you need to top up the bed. Plant the daylilies and water them in.

Next, compost the horse manure until is stable - won't heat up after being turned. It is more than likely that once you get the manure hydrated, it will start to heat up.

This is the same problem I have with "mushroom compost." A truck load was put into a 3' X 3' X 3' compost bin for storage until it could be used. It very quickly heated up to 120F and started growing mushrooms. This is after it has been "sterilized" before being put out for pick up.

Trust your own nose.

LOL! I'd kinda like to see that!

My horsy-post is all spread out over newspapers and planted with daylilies already. I'll just add my own and mix it in between the plants as best I can, and trust nature to do it's thing.

Dry horse manure can be hydrophobic, water repelling. If you have a dried piece of that manure and toss it into a bucket of water it will float on that water for, sometimes, days. Peat moss, dry soil dry leaves, hay,and many other types of organic matter can do the same thing.
If you put dry manure in your compost make the other material as wet as possible to provide the moisture needed by the bacteria that will digest it, the manure will absorb moisture, eventually. If you are spreading it onto your garden, not the best use of any manure, till it in as quackly as possible and the soil moisture will dampen that manure.

Adding a surfactant to the water might help. Any kind of organic soap or detergent in a hose sprayer, or one could use some of that rinse stuff for automatic dishwashers.

I tried to compost several dump truck loads of seed mill gleanings which had been carefully dried - something of the same issue. I ended up using a wand with a fine mist sprayer and a hose spray bottle full of dish washing liquid - fork over a bit of the dry stuff, spray, turn over a bit more, spray, and so on.

I think that what finally worked, however, was all of my added water drained down to the soil underneath the piles which turned into mud, and the constant contact with the wet stuff finally had enough moisture in the dry stuff so it began to compost. Once that started, the hot vapor generated kept it going.

there are soil wetting agents that can be bought from nurseries, but for me i'd do a bit of watering with some grey water like from the showers and laundry.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

All the soil wetting agents are is something like soap or detergents. If you want to stay organic, you need to choose your wetting agent carefully. Many peat or bagged container mixes already contain a wetting agent. It is usually some type of soap or detergent to help make the water wetter (or break the surface tension of the water.)

I'm not sure how best to fix the existing problem where the plants were put into a dry bed of the stuff. When I have a hydrophobic mix that I need to plant in, I usually try to wet and mix it in a container before planting in it. When planting hundreds of trees in containers I would pour mix into a mortar mixing tub and add water and stir as if I were baking on a large scale. Once the mix was evenly moist I could put it in the pots and plant but if I simply tried to plant in the dry material and then water in, it would never work.