New to composting-fresh manure help!

We just had delivered 10 bags of fresh horse manure from the local farm and its sitting outside the front garden for now. Bit of an impulse buy, £2.50 a bag (is that cheap or expensive)? beginner gardener here
Was thinking of buying a compost bin, is it advisable for composting horse manure with other bits and pieces to put on the garden or should we just leave it to rot down by itself. In the meantime, the bags are open so thinking about bugs and all sorts flying around too! Many thanks in advance

 

Thanks JWK that's what my hubby said about it being free from stables. The lady did say the horses had not grazed on fertilized grass as well which is good I guess? Am going to buy this to put it in http://www.amazon.co.uk/Easy-Load-W...cp_3_0P17?ie=UTF8&refRID=0XGZVM4E7M5TD3NN0P17

 

Wow that`s posh, most of us just nail some free palettes together.

 

A lot depends on the bedding used. If it was straw then best to leave it until you can't tell it was straw if that makes sense, about 6 months if the weather is warm and manure wet .If horses bedded on shavings the rotting down process will take a little longer/paper quickest. I have horses and use horse manure extensively in my garden for obvious reasons! I lay the droppings on the surface of the soil as a mulch and let the worms do the hard work. If it just droppings you can put them straight onto beds as long as the droppings don't touch the stems of plants.
The photo is of a bed which has had at least 4 inches of manure spread on it for the last 6 odd years. It's hard work but the structure of the soil improves no end and plants thrive.
Most stables are happy for you to collect your own for nothing. Agree £2.50 delivered doesn't sound too bad but to have any real affect you do need huge quantities so might be better to borrow/hire a trailer and get it yourself in the future....a good job for those cold winter days!!!

 

You are all a mine of great information, thank you so much! Now......to get my hubby building a crate when he always says he's got a million and one things to do first!

 

You might want to check if your local council is subsidising compost bins, they tend to do that periodically. Although it will probably only be for black "Dalek" type bins, rather than nice wooden ones

If you compost all your garden rubbish then adding fresh manure will act as an "accelerator" and dramatically increase the temperature of the heap - which is the best type of compotsing method.

Or you can just make a pile of manure-only and let that rot down for 6 months (more is fine) and then use it.

If you put "manure bedding" on the flower beds "fresh" two things will happen. It will use up Nitrogen in the rotting-down process, which in effect it will steal from the soil (and Nitrogen is what makes plants grow) and secondly if it comes into contact with the stems / roots of plants the Ammonia in the bedding will "burn" the stems - which will kill small plants, and may well set-back even large plants.

 

When our daughter used to help out/ride at a fairly local stables we'd fill the car with bags of horse poo after dropping her off, then fill it again whilst waiting to take her back home. As it's a fairly large MPV we could fit about 30 bags (maybe more on the first and slightly less on the return) in on each trip, which would have been 3,000 bags p.a., but obviously when it was raining or the poo heap was frozen we took less/nothing, although we also loaded up loads of dumpy bags of used stable straw for mulching, but we gathered about 2,000 bags p.a.

That was before the riding establishment moved, plus our daughter's GCSE, then A Level commitments reduced the amount of visits, but 2,ooo bags @ £2.50 would have been £5,000, meaning we made a massive profit on what it cost for her riding lessons.

If you can bag/load/transport the horse poo yourself you should be able to get it for free as stables have to pay to get their poo piles removed. Your Local Authority will have a list of registered riding establishments on their website - check them out.

 

I was visiting friends the other day and they keep offering me bags of manure (Mr M wouldn't hump it to the car and I haven't had bags with me when I've visited ) but, it's on my agenda.

Now, consider this: they are telling me to grab it and add it to my garden (*this* thread has given me all the info I need to run with that idea), in the meantime, they are bemoaning the conditions of their own soil

Erm, why aren't you harvesting the manure yourself, to enrich your own soil!!!???

Gotta love that "dropped on" look