Pondering poo

[pepper2.0]

Something I never really thought about, but today while tossing in some turkey bones to the compost I started thinking...

Why is composted manure so good for the garden? I know it is, I've seen the difference it makes in soil.. but why? For example cows.. they eat plants, how is that different than composting? I can understand them breaking down the plants much faster than composting but regardless of the time it takes it all gets broken down into compost either way.

Maybe it's the added body fluids? But wouldn't adding meat to the compost work the same way? Just something stuck in my mind today.

 

[Meadowlark]

Seems to me that due to the pest attracting nature and risk of pathogens, meat is not a good option for composting for most. Not to mention it takes much longer to break down than plant matter.

My cows eat grass...unfertilized, untreated grass and all natural. Nothing else basically except for range cubes in winter which is mostly plant protein products.

Their excrements along with a little topsoil go into my cow compost. I find that cow compost to be far more nutrient rich than adding grass clippings (either composted or not) to garden soil....and also far superior to household compost.

However, the same isn't necessarily true of plants other than grass...legumes for example. I find green manures of legumes like alfalfa, clover, vetch actually add more nutrients to garden soil than my cow compost. Sunn Hemp is another prime example...huge nitrogen fixing ability upwards of 150 pounds of nitrogen per acre.

When I combine applications of my cow compost with applications of green manure (legumes turned under into soil while green) and "chop and drop" applications of plant matter. I find absolutely nothing else is needed...the No N, P, K required soil test result.

That's how I roll...and have for decades.

 

[pepper2.0]

Seems to me that due to the pest attracting nature and risk of pathogens, meat is not a good option for composting for most. Not to mention it takes much longer to break down than plant matter.

I wouldn't use meat in an open compost due to animals but I have large compost barrels I drilled 1/2" holes in and tops so nothing can get in.. maybe mice I guess. I wouldn't add cooked meat, it takes a long time to break down. Birds are different, they break down quick even if they are cooked. I've tossed in a lot of groundhogs and other pests, they stink for a few days but within a week it's mostly just fur and bones. By the time it's all composted and ready for the garden even most of the small bones like ribs are gone.

My cows eat grass...unfertilized, untreated grass and all natural. Nothing else basically except for range cubes in winter which is mostly plant protein products.

Their excrements along with a little topsoil go into my cow compost. I find that cow compost to be far more nutrient rich than adding grass clippings (either composted or not) to garden soil....and also far superior to household compost.

This is what I am pondering.. for example if you take 1 weeks worth of cow manure and one weeks worth of grass or whatever the cow has been eating, and compost the manure and the grass seperatly.. why is the cow manure better? Regardless of the amount of time it takes to compost seperatly, and just looking at the two finished products we both agree the manure is superior. But that is what doesn't make sense to me.. the cow digests a lot of the goodness in the grass into it's body so what it poops out is less then what it was before it was eaten.

So is it the bial fluids etc that comes out that makes manure so much better than the grass before it was eaten? I know it's kind of a weird question lol, but thinking about it is really interesting to me. There has to be something in the manure that makes the grass better fertilizer than what it started off as.

 

[Meadowlark]

It is an interesting topic. One thing is that manure is concentrated in comparison to grass. Grass can have good nitrogen content, but the "P" and "K" are lacking.

Somehow the cow's digestive process yields a balanced nutrient content. Just walk around a pasture where cows or other animals are present. The immediate area around the droppings is always greener than the surrounding grass.

Also, I would note that cows on pasture require mineral supplements. They gotta have it. It seems likely to me that is the source of the "P" and "K" in the manure.

 

[pepper2.0]

It is an interesting topic. One thing is that manure is concentrated in comparison to grass. Grass can have good nitrogen content, but the "P" and "K" are lacking.

Somehow the cow's digestive process yields a balanced nutrient content. Just walk around a pasture where cows or other animals are present. The immediate area around the droppings is always greener than the surrounding grass.

Also, I would note that cows on pasture require mineral supplements. They gotta have it. It seems likely to me that is the source of the "P" and "K" in the manure.

But I still don't understand if you take a bush hog or lawnmower, cut the grass, clover etc in the pasture the cow would have eaten, compost it.. wouldn't all the minerals, npk etc be more in the compost than if a cow ate it and absorbed a bunch into it's body before it poops out the leftovers then that gets composted? My mind says yes, but it doesn't work that way.. both science and experience in gardening shows the manure is better than just composting the feed substance.

There is something produced from the animal (cow in this example) that is added to the manure that isn't in the plants it eats.

 

[Meadowlark]

...Also, I would note that cows on pasture require mineral supplements. They gotta have it. It seems likely to me that is the source of the "P" and "K" in the manure.

Don't forget this ^^^

Core ingredients in mineral supplements...NaCl, Calcium. Phosphorus, Magnesium, Potassium, Sulfur.

My cows eat it like candy. They will find it...wherever you place it on the property. If you don't provide it, they will eventually try to break out to find it.

 

[roadrunner]

I compost everything, including meat. I have some cats to keep the rats away and the few rats that do make it into the yard eventually get caught and then they become compost

Manure comes in numerous forms. I don't have cows and I'm not going to trouble myself looking for not only cow manure, but cow manure that is NOT contaminated with persistent herbicide(s).

This is why I like cold composting and don't care for hot compost, because in cold composting there are far more diversity of animal/soil life. I think the manure from all those different species serves me just fine. I would love to have some cows come thru and leave some droppings, but that's not going to happen, so I have to work with what I have.

 

[Meadowlark]

@pepper2.0 you are probably too young to remember Mirex (organochloride insecticide). Really bad stuff. It was widely used for fire ant control and broadcast over wide areas. Finally in 1978 after tons of data showing the harmful effects of that stuff it was outlawed in USA.

When I purchased this ranch back in 1980, much to my surprise, I found bags of unopened Mirex stored in a shed.  On pastures, it has a reported half-life of 10 years. Needless to say, I didn't use my own cow manure for many years because of that persistence.

Funny thing is that if you could purchase it today, many would still use it (like DDT)...and likely some on here would even recommend it.

I said all that to say it pays to be careful any time you apply something that comes from external sources.... even something as appealing as composted animal manure...but we have had that discussion in the past.

I value my homemade cow compost way beyond what the box stores sell bagged versions for because I know for 45 years, the grass has never been exposed to soil contaminating chemicals. I would even go so far as to say, to me, cows (or any domesticated animals) are worth owning simply for the manure. Everything else is just bonus.

What the magic is in that composted manure and how it gets there from grass is one of life's great amazing happenings.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

My guess is that what the animal digests and absorbs most is in the carbohydrate spectrum, energy givers, but not great fertiliser. It is tough getting enough energy out of grass, mostly it will be from cellulose, and that would mean a higher concentration of unused things with NPK in them in the manure.

 

[roadrunner]

If you cut grass and leave it on the ground to be composted, it's going to be eaten, if not by a cow, then by something. That's what compost (or rotting) is, it's organic matter being eaten by something. Every living thing needs nitrogen.

I've been composting and chopping/dropping yard waste for years and as a result I have a very biodiverse environment. And that's why I don't care to put in the effort to Hot Compost. I have all these varied forms of life that eat up (compost) all my organic matter in such quick time. Hot composting is not biodiverse.

When I first started years ago replacing my lawn, I put store-bought wood chips around my tree and they took a very long time to decompose (compost). However, nowadays they wouldn't last half the time. BTW, nowadays I don't use store-bought wood chips.

Compost is simply organic matter being eaten by some form of life. When you leave a banana on your table and it begins to rot, that is from something eating it. It's no different than composting.

It's not about cows being better than "composting". Rather it's about having as much biodiversity as possible to create healthy soils. Regenerative farmers use cattle on their fields for relatively short periods of time where they leave behind their saliva, urine and manure and the soil life distributes those nutrients around. However, composting still happens with other forms of organic matter, such as dead plant matter, dead bugs and countless other forms of organic matter after the cows depart to allow the field to regenerate the soil.

 

[pepper2.0]

This is why I like cold composting and don't care for hot compost, because in cold composting there are far more diversity of animal/soil life. I think the manure from all those different species serves me just fine. I would love to have some cows come thru and leave some droppings, but that's not going to happen, so I have to work with what I have.

Me too. When I toss in tomatoes, apples etc it is thick with fruit flies.. must be millions of them. They eat the fruit and poo it out in the compost bins like little micro-cows. When I toss in meat there are thousands of beetles and maggots that eat it up in no time, pooing it out and then there are lots of spiders and other predators living in it also, feeding on the maggots and pooing them out.. it's a giant poo factory

 

[pepper2.0]

Apparently from what I've been researching about it, it's the microbial life that starts out in the digestive track that makes the big difference. In manure it continues to thrive even after composted and put into the garden.

 

[roadrunner]

Apparently from what I've been researching about it, it's the microbial life that starts out in the digestive track that makes the big difference. In manure it continues to thrive even after composted and put into the garden.

That was my point in post #10 above (4th paragraph), about a banana on the kitchen table.

Microbial like is everywhere. You know what they say, out of sight, out of mind

 

[Meadowlark]

Apparently from what I've been researching about it, it's the microbial life that starts out in the digestive track that makes the big difference. In manure it continues to thrive even after composted and put into the garden.

Microbial life adds "P" and "K"? I doubt it.

It is great stuff for sure but as a source of "P" and "K" in manure seems unlikely.

 

[pepper2.0]

That was my point in post #10 above (4th paragraph), about a banana on the kitchen table.

Microbial like is everywhere. You know what they say, out of sight, out of mind

Out of site out of mind is exactly what it is! When I think of a rotting banana I think of the fruit flies swarming it, the cup of apple cider vinegar with a drop of soap to get rid of the little buggers lol. But I sometimes forget there is a world of life beyond what I see.

Although that said, apparently manure has 1000's of different kinds of beneficial microorganisms.. plant based compost only has 100's. That is the big difference between manure and kitchen scrap compost.