composting large amounts of manure

Good Morning Kate,
I am hoping you may have a suggestion for me. I struggle with vast supply of manure that I am trying to compost. My current approach is to put it all in a giant pile and wait and hope it will turn out. That works somewhat, but it takes a long time and the piles are becoming numerous. Do you have a suggestion how I could speed up the process? I do have a tractor with front-end loader available, but mostly work with a pitchfork by hand.

Anna Messerschmidt wrote:Good Morning Kate,
I am hoping you may have a suggestion for me. I struggle with vast supply of manure that I am trying to compost. My current approach is to put it all in a giant pile and wait and hope it will turn out. That works somewhat, but it takes a long time and the piles are becoming numerous. Do you have a suggestion how I could speed up the process? I do have a tractor with front-end loader available, but mostly work with a pitchfork by hand.

Hi Anna,
I'll first start with an edited extract from my book which focuses on manure in general terms (which I think other Permies might be interested in) and then I will give you some more personalised info.

Manure from cows, sheep, horses and chickens can be added to your composting systems as a nitrogen-rich input (yep, they’re a green even though they’re coloured brown). There are a few things you should know:
• It’s a misconception that manure is acidic. It can actually be quite alkaline, with a pH typically between 8 and 12.
• The amount of nitrogen in manure varies depending on the animal and their diet. Chicken manure is the ‘hottest’, as it has a significant amount of organic nitrogen. This is because chickens don’t wee, and all the nitrogen is captured in their poo – so, it must be composted before being applied to your garden.
• Don’t add any fresh manure to your garden without composting it first, as it can stunt plant growth.
• Avoid using manure if you don’t know what has been sprayed on the grass eaten by the animal. Manure contaminated with aminopyralid is unfortunately common, as this is the active ingredient in broad-leaf weedkillers.
• If you have access to a lot of safe manure, then it’s best to age it in a separate pile under a tarpaulin for up to a year, or mix it with carbon and compost it before using it on your garden.
• Horse manure is often full of weed seeds that can germinate in your garden, so it’s best to hot compost it.
• Be wary of using pig manure, as it can contain Salmonella, E. coli and parasitic worms. It must be hot composted before use.

My suggestions for you - ageing your manure in piles is a great idea, but you won't produce "compost" doing this - it will simply be mature manure which can be used on your garden after about one year. To turn it into compost and speed up the decomposition add an equal volume of carbon-rich materials (shredded autumn leaves, aged wood chips, ripped paper or cardboard etc) and keep the pile moist as compost microbes need access to water to thrive and multiply. The more frequently you can turn your piles the faster you will produce compost too.

Hope this helps.

Kate

We have 2 Guernsey cows who dispose of many pounds of manure a day. In the winter when they live in or near the barn we collect a wheelbarrow full each day. We roll it or sled it out into a collecting area about 50 foot diameter circle. This i the first year of massive collection.

Over the summer we have added straw, leaves etc to the area and let the chickens do as they do with it, Now in the early fall it is dried out and easy to shovel etc.

Dairy cow manure is really wet when first collected.

What to do now for preparation for the Spring so we can use it and also make its footprint smaller so we can start anew

Glenn Raleigh wrote:We have 2 Guernsey cows who dispose of many pounds of manure a day. In the winter when they live in or near the barn we collect a wheelbarrow full each day. We roll it or sled it out into a collecting area about 50 foot diameter circle. This i the first year of massive collection.

Over the summer we have added straw, leaves etc to the area and let the chickens do as they do with it, Now in the early fall it is dried out and easy to shovel etc.

Dairy cow manure is really wet when first collected.

What to do now for preparation for the Spring so we can use it and also make its footprint smaller so we can start anew

Hi Glen,
Thanks for you question. Can I first start by suggesting that you read my answer to the question above yours, as I have included an edited extract from my book which focuses on how to safely compost manure.

First and foremost it would be ideal if you could add some carbon-rich ingredients into your manure piles during winter, rather than waiting until summer to add straw and leaves (dry autumn leaves are perfect to add). This is because compost microbes need access to both nitrogen and carbon to proliferate and colonise your waste. We want to encourage aerobic bacteria into your manure from the beginning, so decomposition is sped up. Also make sure the manure is kept moist and is turned every now and again to incorporate oxygen (or add wood chips which create open pore spaces in the mix if turning is too hard). The chickens will also help with aerating so that is helpful. If your manure dries out too quickly the beneficial biology will die and decomposition will slow. So keep these piles of poo moist but not too wet. To make big piles of manure smaller quickly give hot composting a try - I have a detailed section in my book about this.

Hope this helps.
Kate

My suggestions for you - ageing your manure in piles is a great idea, but you won't produce "compost" doing this - it will simply be mature manure which can be used on your garden after about one year. To turn it into compost and speed up the decomposition add an equal volume of carbon-rich materials (shredded autumn leaves, aged wood chips, ripped paper or cardboard etc) and keep the pile moist as compost microbes need access to water to thrive and multiply.

Maybe I'm hyper focusing a little bit here so please forgive me if I am, but do the wood chips need to be aged?

Could I mix fresh chip and fresh manure and compost it that way?

I'm wondering if the aged wood is advantageous because the thought is that it is colonized with bacteria/fungi/microbes and introducing that to manure perhaps enhances the composting process?

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

If you let wood chips age, white rot fungi will happily convert the lignin and cellulose and in doing so remove most of the carbon (unless you dry them out completely and store them under cover...impractical for most of us). The fresher the wood, the more value it has to the composting process.

Google “aerated static pile”.  

Manure + wood chips, keeping it moist-enough and turning it every now and then, should break it down pretty good.