Re: OT Stable Litter

Posted by Billy NY on August 31, 2007 at 07:08:18 from (205.188.117.74):

In Reply to: OT Stable Litter posted by tg in VA on August 30, 2007 at 17:44:52:

If you do some research and have some room you can create a fairly consistent product that is thoroughly broke down, and by all means can create a very useful compost that can sell.

I did this at our place when I was working there, as our neighbor was removing the material and selling it, paid his land taxes with it, just by selling it to vegetable gardeners. There is no doubt you can create an excellent compost product, do a search on the web, lots of information on the subject.

We use sawdust bedding and used to have the same amount of stalls to deal with. Feeding good hay helps as you don't get all that mashed into the manure, takes a lot of nitrogen to break down that carbon, which is the hay left over. keep the bedding consistent as possible. The excessive hay or straw in the bedding seems to take longer to break down, still not a problem, just takes longer. With straw or other bedding, probably need a shredder to make this work. Pine sawdust seems to be a good bedding to use, the finer the particles the better, but as long as you don't have bark and large chunks. I have some compost made in '05 that was from oak sawdust and the larger pieces have not broke down.

You need room to stockpile and turn it, get a compost thermometer and keep the internal temperature up there, aerobic composting say around 145 deg, do the research, there are some great articles on it. Keep the moisture up as well, it can't be dried out. I think you need a lot of dry weather for this to become a problem, my stockpile was in the shade and even when hot and dry it still stayed moist enough to break down without adding water, if in the open, you may need to water it down in hot dry weather.

If you can keep your bedding consistent, feed hay that gets eaten and not mashed into the bedding, keep your stock piles organized and turned for aeration, correct temperature and moisture, using even a compact loader tractor you can create quite a bit of good compost aerobically. Have it analyzed, make adjustments, if you have a market for it, it can sell. Even with some investment in equipment, it will pay itself off, if there is a market in your area, otherwise you may have to take it a step further, screen it, create it as specified by a greenhouse or similar grower who will buy it, 35 stalls is a lot of manure, with some time and work it could be profitable, it raw compost was selling for $25-$30 cu. yd around here. Must be thoroughly broke down or it will rob nitrogen from the plants growing in it, I used it with dried blood and bone meal in my vegetable garden and the results were excellent.

One pile I made a 2 years ago with a compact tractor, an old front end loader like the size of a Cat 920 or similar would be ideal for this operation, it's a bit much for the little tractor, kept the pins greased on that loader quite often.

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