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Farmyard manure ....what exactly is it these days?

VerdunVerdun Posts: 23,348

bought couple bags of farmyard manure but what exactly is it now?  I don't think it is anything to do with horse/cow droppings as it once was.  Looked over the bags and the description is very vague so I think it's just recycled vegetation.(????). Not sure it's as valuable for mulching either 

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  • GemmaJFGemmaJF Posts: 2,286

    lol Edd, wish I had been so lucky to get a bag of compost for Mother's Day. I don't know maybe chicken droppings, mushroom compost that kind of stuff? My farmyard manure, is, well farm yard manure from farmyards and I think it has the same stuff in it that it always did. Probably more anit-biotics and worming compounds though than in the past. image

  • YviestevieYviestevie Posts: 7,066

    Are you talking s**t again Verdun.image

    Hi from Kingswinford in the West Midlands
  • I know mines horse picked fresh off the field I try not to get stable stuff as the straw or wood chipping take longer to break down.

    Were lucky around here lots of small stables and their happy to get rid.

    As for the shop stuff probably has a mixture of farm manure just well composted bit like the vegetation stuff you can by from some council recycling centres.

    If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
  • The stuff you bought could have been produced on a farm where they just have large numbers of calves.  Lots of dairy farmers don't keep the calves their cows produce, but sell them on to those who specialise in growing youngstock.  The calves are often sold at auction and dairy farmers will buy heifers ("youngstock") to add to their herd - once the time-consuming stage of looking after them has passed and the animals themselves are nearing sexual maturity and can live outdoors.  Cross-bred calves (usually the offspring of a dairy cow and a beef-breed bull) are sold on to the people who produce beef animals, and the bull calves will have been castrated.  The pure-bred dairy heifer calves are sold (to dairy farmers) when they reach what's called "bulling" age and the farmer will then most probably use a beef-breed bull for the heifer's first pregnancy.  This is because artificial insemination isn't either successful or advisable for what's called "a maiden heifer" - the heifers will "run with the bull" in the fields, nature takes its course, and the resulting calf will be sold for beef production.  Subsequent breeding is usually via A.I., when the farmer will chose semen from a bull whose bloodline is that of a proven successful dairy line in terms of milk quality/quantity.  Farmers keep records of their cows' lactations and will only keep a pure-bred dairy breed bull calf if it's a really "special" one which they might go on to use to further their own particular "bloodline".

    Farming has become so specialised these days - for reasons of economy and efficiency - that it doesn't pay to rear all your own home-bred calves, unless of course you are breeding a particular "line" and want to retain the offspring (heifer calves) for eventual inclusion in the dairy herd itself.  Calves will be housed indoors and thus create a fair amount of waste - usually straw-based.  People who keep horses nowadays seem to use wood shavings for bedding rather than straw.

  • DorsetUKDorsetUK Posts: 441

    Round here most of the dairy farmyard stuff goes back on the arable land.  Much of it is slurry  from a combination of silage and cake (not the sort you lot would eat). Bedding tends to be either rubber mats or sand some of which gets mixed in as well.  Sheep possibly housed on straw when lambing, horses wood shavings, plenty of that available as there are horses everywhere.  We know when they are clearing out the pig houses! but again it's more slurry than manure as such.  Don't know re the bought stuff but I hope I don't ever get desperate enough to buy it

  • GemmaJFGemmaJF Posts: 2,286

    Just collect up a few bags and put them aside Verdun. I use bags that had bark chippings in. Then I've always got a mulching supply of the real stuff. image And it is free.

  • Zoomer44Zoomer44 Posts: 3,267

    Mines either from a farm or stables so it's either horse or cow muck and if I'm lucky there isn't a lot of straw or bark chippings in it. Wouldn't dream of buying manure when it can be obtained for free.  

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