Handling animal manure

If you keep livestock or poultry, we have some hints for you. Here’s Barbara Peacock.

Today, I’d like to talk about using animal manure and urine as fertilizer for crops.

We all know that animal manure is good fertilizer. It improves the soil by adding organic matter and essential nutrients for good plant growth. You can’t see the nutrients that make up this plant food, but plants must have them to grow properly. They get them from the soil, through their roots. Animal manure and urine contain a lot of valuable plant foods. So when you mix them with the soil, your crops grow better.

Now if you use your animal manure to help your crops, there may be some things you could do with the manure and urine so your crops can use it efficiently and grow even better. That’s because some plant nutrients are easily lost if you don’t collect your animals’ manure and urine and store it properly, and if you don’t apply it properly to your crops.

For instance, nitrogen is an important plant nutrient that’s in both manure and urine. But if the animal manure just lies around in small lumps on the ground in the sun and wind and rain, much of the nitrogen in it will be lost to the air, and the other nutrients in it will be wasted. It’s much better to collect the manure while it’s still fresh and rich in plant nutrients, and keep it all heaped together in a tightly packed pile until you want to use it.

It’s best to build this pile on a hard surface if you can, so that nutrients won’t seep or trickle down into the ground below and be lost. A cement floor is best—or ground that’s fairly hard and waterproof, like clay.

You could surround the pile with a small ridge of soil to catch any liquids that might otherwise flow away from the pile and be lost. This will also prevent water from getting into the pile and washing away some of the good nutrients you want for your crops. If you cannot do this, you should at least try to plant some crops or fruit trees near the run-off from the pile so that these crops or trees can use the nutrients in the run-off.

You should cover the manure pile, if possible, to protect it from being dried out by the hot sun, and to keep off heavy rains that would wash plant nutrients out of it.

Some people cover their manure pile directly with a sheet of plastic, or banana leaves, or banana leaves and soil. Or you could build a shelter to protect the pile—just a simple thatched roof supported by poles would keep off rain and sun. If you can’t build a shelter, you should at least make the manure pile under a large tree so it won’t be dried out so much by the sun.

Now what about your animals’ urine? How can you collect urine? It’s easy if the animals spend much of their time in a fairly small area, for example, a small compound or a shed where they sleep. Just spread dry grass, chopped straw or other plant stems, dry leaves, or even clean, dry soil on the ground in this area to soak up the urine the animals produce. You can also use the coarse maize or grass or hay stems that your animals won’t eat.

Maybe you noticed I said “chopped straw.” That’s because chopped straw soaks up more urine than straw that isn’t chopped. Chopped straw makes good bedding for your animals if you have it.

Now, before this bedding gets too wet and dirty, take it away and add it to the manure pile, and put down more dry grass, straw, or leaves as bedding for the animals. If you do this regularly, it will help your animals stay cleaner and healthier too.

Whenever you add more to the manure pile, pack it all firmly together, because if there’s too much air in with it, more nitrogen will be lost.

Also, keep the pile moist—not too wet and not too dry. If it’s so wet that liquid trickles away from it, add more dry material such as chopped straw, dry leaves, or dry soil. If, on the other hand, the pile starts to dry out, sprinkle it with a little water to moisten it.

Finally, the time will come to apply your manure to your field or garden. Remember I said that if manure lies uncovered on top of the ground, it will lose much of its nitrogen. That wastes valuable plant nutrients.

Your plants will get much more nitrogen if you dig the manure right into the soil as you apply it—as soon as you can after spreading it.

So it’s really best to take your manure to the field just when you’re ready to cultivate. Then, as soon as you’ve spread the manure, you can cultivate and mix it into the soil. That way, all the plant nutrients in it will go directly into the soil, and help your crops grow well.