Saturday 25/01/2014

Horse Manure

Off we go in the morning to load the trailer with 2 cubic metres of free horse manure from nearby.
This horse manure was advertised in Gumtree and described as "Suitable for organic planting as our horses are fed with natural horse feed no hormones added."
This is our second load of horse manure from this source.  It is fresh, so needs time to compost.  The first load (about 2 months ago) went into a 200 litre storage drum and onto the beds in the veggie patch that have nothing growing at the moment.  The chooks loved it and have done a lot of work turning those beds over and scratching in the manure.
Our previous source of free horse manure was mixed, and generally better composted.  It did have a lot more weed, mainly nettle and chickweed, both of which are ofcourse excellent food for chickens, so we didn't actually mind at all. The property, however has been sold, so was no longer an option for us.
We use today's horse manure as the first layer of mulch in the existing fruit tree area.  As it is fresh we keep it away from the trees and out of their drip line.  This trailer load does about 1/3 of the existing fruit tree area.
We collect a second trailer load of horse manure to finish the day off.

The Colonel

The Colonel doesn't look any worse today.  He is still attempting to crow, so presumably he feels well enough he things he can fend off any intruders.  His breathing is, however more noisy and laboured. We gave him another dose of antibiotics and leave him warm and sheltered as per last night.