Max Madalinski

Hi There Permies,

So in an effort to finally better my manure management game, I'm wondering if anyone out there can help me troubleshoot my manure pack composting troubles. Every year I let my two goats manure and urine mix with the silly amount of hay that the goats waste through the late fall and winter and then clean it out and pile it up in the spring. I pile it up either in a 4'x4' three sided bins or into large piles that are often about 5-6' in diameter and at least 3' tall. I get these good and damp if the hay seems dry when I initially stack the pile and then cover the whole thing with a tarp.

The main issue I've been having is that I really would like to hot compost this stuff to kill off all the grass seed that is in the hay and manure and to speed up my composting process. From what I've tried so far I can never quite get everything to completely compost and end up always having to let it sit for a year to completely break down and we always end up with tons of grass sprouting in the pile and wherever we decide to use the compost. I've tried turning it every four-five days, which typically gets it up into the 140-150 F range (measured with a compost thermometer) for a week or two, but after that it always kind of drops off to between 100-120 F and no amount of turning seems to get it back up to temperature.

I'm wondering if it's possible if there's not enough Nitrogen in the pile and so that's why I'm having this issue? Or maybe not enough oxygen? Or maybe the hay is too matted and not able to break down quickly? I'm not sure. Thanks in advance for any advice/ideas on this issue.

I've had pretty a pretty good experience using goats to keep brush under control in a semi-forested landscape. What I've found is that when pasturing them in the deep woods they will quickly eat most of the leaves and bark off of whatever brush is in their pasture and open things up even in dense areas of brush so that you can get in and clear it out. One issue that can happen is that they often need to be moved very frequently or else they run out of food pretty quickly. It depends a lot on how dense the vegetation is and if it's palatable to them or not.

I haven't had any problems with the goats getting out since I upgraded to a good energizer and 42" tall fencing. It is a PITA to set up electric net in dense brushy areas though since it's always getting snagged and tangled on branches, stumps, rocks, etc., not to mention that you have to first clear lanes for the fencing through tall brush (I use a scythe, which I personally think works much better than a brush saw). If you have flatter and less stony land than me you might be able to mechanize the process with a tractor and a brush hog. I recommend shooting for larger paddocks since you can contain more overall area with less work, which is a better way to go since it is so much more difficult to set up fences this way than in a typical pasture. You will need to cut any brambles or other brushy plants off at the base after the goats have been through since the goats will tend to only eat the leaves and youngest most nutrient dense branches on the shrubs. There are also some plants in my area that the goats just don't seem to like or that they can't consume too much of (like Barberry, which they hardly touch, and Bracken Fern) which I also cut down manually after I've ran them through an area I'm trying to clear. I'm pretty sure Geoff Lawton made a good short free video about this process which is pretty accurate from my experience.

I have also known and worked with a number of farmers around my area that have used pigs to till up along the edge of their pastures and forests and sown their pasture mix in this area afterwards to pretty good effect. You might be able to get the pigs to eat up some of the roots in areas the goats have already been through, but I've never tried it and can't speak too much to how they will/won't behave in this situation.

I'm not arguing that sending toxic materials to a landfill is a good solution. I just don't think spreading it out if you are unsure of how this is going to affect the concentration levels in your soils is a better solution. If you're unsure of the effects of something on your own soil why take that risk? My initial argument was mainly that we should not be trying to localize responsibility for things like heavy metals.

Of course materials are only unsafe when they reach certain concentrations, but the concentration levels that are considered "safe" can and have changed over time when new research shows that levels previously believed to be safe were not so safe after all. I'm not personally going to test the contents of every bit of material that I choose to put into a sheet mulch bed. As such I don't know what the concentration levels are in detail and if I can't say for sure that I'm not going to be making my soils unsafe why would I try and use these materials onsite? Maybe I should be looking for more creative solutions for using materials that are sent to me that may contain toxins. I am certainly doing everything I can to not consume the junk mail, plastics, heavy metals, etc. and not encourage the problem. However if I encounter these materials I am not going to use them in my gardens for the reasons that I have stated.

I have to disagree about spreading out heavy metals as a better solution. The main reasons I disagree are that heavy metals will persist in soils for long periods of time without leaching or dispersing (there are still high quantities of lead in soil around barns and farmhouses that haven't been painted with lead since the 1920s) and that even if the levels are in much smaller quantities, very small quantities of these metals can have damaging and long term effects on children. Maybe I'm slightly exaggerating by bringing lead into the conversation as no one uses lead on cardboard or newsprint, but this is by no means a straw man's argument since one of the materials we are discussing are inks that may contain heavy metals which persist in the soil in much the same way as lead and can have similarly damaging effects. The specific material that I mentioned is Cadmium (though I am sure there are other toxic heavy metals that have been used as ink pigments), which I know from years I spent studying printmaking, has been used in red and yellow inks. I don't know if this is still common practice, but if I wasn't sure about the contents of a material I personally would not put it into my own garden bed.

I don't particularly understand the idea that seems to be getting stated a lot here that burying potentially toxic materials, that may or may not contain heavy metals, in your own soil is somehow a good idea because you are taking "responsibility" for it. If you are putting toxic stuff into your soil what happens when you die or sell your land and no one else knows where you have buried these materials? What if you happened to have a can of lead paint around? Would you use this to paint your house or bury it in the soil around your own house rather than sending it to a landfill as a means of taking responsibility for it? I guess I am personally much more inclined to send it to a landfill where at least future generations will know that this is a landfill that is filled with highly toxic junk than to bury it my own backyard where it can poison future generations.

I agree that recycling centers and landfills are disgusting pits, but I don't think burying potentially toxic materials in one's own backyard is a particularly good solution to the problem. Given that we already have numerous landfills I think it makes more sense to send things that we know are toxic into these pits, to lobby and organize against the production and use of these toxic materials, to stop purchasing and consuming these materials in the first place, and to only produce, recycle, and reuse things that we know are safe.

As for printed materials I like that people have mentioned contacting the printers to find out what materials they are using. This has the double effect of giving you more knowledge of what you might be putting into your soil and letting the producer know you're not going to put up with the use of toxic junk. I know my local paper is made from newsprint and soy based carbon black ink. I am happy to use this in my own backyard. If I suspected that an advertisement that got sent to me in the mail may have red or yellow cadmium based ink (for example), I sure as hell would not be burying it my soil.

Dean,

The best system I've seen to raise chickens the way your talking about comes from the folks at Vermont Compost Company. They basically turn there laying hens out onto commercial sized compost heaps and let them pick through all the scraps to get all of their feed.

Check out the video Geoff Lawton posted about this system at geofflawton.com under the title "Feed Chickens Without Grain" and "chicken tractor on steroids."

One of the tricks to this set-up that's not pictured in the video is that they keep a winter compost heap in a high tunnel so that the birds can still pick at it through the winter.

I've also seen presentations by Mark Shepard, in which he talks about keeping laying hens in the same fashion, ie. letting them do all the eating and turning over of the compost heap. He explained that they kept the chicken coop right next to the garden and would just throw veggie scraps over the fence and let the birds pick everything over.

I haven't seen anything about raising broilers without grain and I think that there is a good challenge there in trying to get a competitively sized bird to market without any grain. The main obstacle I see here is that most "broiler" type breeds are just not particularly suited for sustainable production. They are all bred for super fast growth on high protein feeds and are not particularly good at getting all of their nutrition from forage. I had a neighbor who tried raising cornish crosses without any grain (as his wife has serious grain allergy issues) and the birds ended up being super skinny and not particularly good eating. I think you'd want to go with a good dual purpose breed (like a Rhode Island Red, or Jersey Giant) and slowly select for good meat characteristics (or find someone whose already done this work and buy your stock from them). I also think having a good established food forest where you could let the chickens clean up fallen fruit, nuts, grains, and pests would go a long way to feeding a free ranged flock of broilers or egg layers.

Personally I think if you really want to raise poultry without purchased in feed, ducks and geese are a much easier way to go if you've got some open pasture and plenty of available water. Geese produce a lot of good meat (and grease) and can survive mostly off of young grass. Geese are a little more of a nuisance personality wise though, since they often become agressive and territorial as they get older (though you could see this as a plus since it makes the task of butchering a little less difficult). Ducks also are much more garden friendly than chickens and can be run through your gardens to harvest slugs and other pests once the plants are large enough that they won't be able to graze on them.

Lettuces and goosefoots/spinach/beet plants would be at the top of my list. Also anything in the brassica family, but I think Broccoli Raab (I believe 30 days?), Mustards, and Arugula are some of the fastest yielders. I also am a fan of kohlrabi, but not a lot of other people like it.

When I think about what really gets me through the early cold months its all the semi "wild" edibles that pop up around the property. Nettles, Ramps, Lovage, Chives, perrennial rocket, Burdock, sorrel, Fiddlehead ferns, walking onions... but all these take time to get established so that you can harvest them. Japanese knotweed shoots are also quite tasty, but I certainly don't recommend planting them. We eat them out here in Southern VT as they're very opportunistic in our area and we like to do our part to help keep them in check.

I'd second the recommendation for Buckwheat as a fast grower, but you do have to wait til summer months to plant since it's not particularly cold hardy.

I don't know much about the specifics of how they do it, but the guys up at Vermont Compost Company (http://vermontcompost.com/about.html see the big picture at the bottom of the page)  raise a commercial flock of chickens for eggs with 0 supplemental grain. I think a lot of it involves allowing the birds to pick over there enormous compost piles.

I would just like to elaborate a little bit on what Fred said. It's not that copper is not good for sheep, it's that too much (i.e. the levels of copper you might give a cow, goat, or poultry) is toxic for sheep. Sheep do however require a very small amount  of copper to boost their general immunity and resistance to parasites.

Here's a link to a good article about it:
http://www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/revisitingcopper.html

Also Pat Coleby's book, "Natural Sheep Care," has a very thorough treatment of the role of copper and many other minerals in the general well-being of sheep.

we use a combination of a llama and guard donkeys at the farm I'm at now to protect our sheep. We also have a trio of border collies that generally patrol the farm during the day. Usually the llama is in with all the ewes and lambs by himself shortly after we finish lambing and get them out on pasture. He seems to do a pretty good job as a guard animal, but he does have the help of electric fencing... It seems to me that two guard dogs would probably be a better aolution because they could actually counter-maneuver with a few coyotes, while the llama really just kind of looks scary, but probably wouldn't be able to keep up with the much more agile coyotes.

we don't really put anything out to protect the chickens, except for letting the dogs roam around as they please, which has been pretty good protection except for one weekend where one of collies decided he needed some chicken toys ... that was pretty infuriating...