manure spreader: help me with this...

Boy, this sounds really familiar. We bought our 15 acres, house, and a barn (5 stall) almost 6 years ago now after deciding that to board 3 horses was most of a mortgage payment. I have most of 13 acres in 3 different pieces fenced as pasture that we try to rotate usage. The equine census has grown to 9 (5 of our own and 4 that we board seperately on one of the pastures.)

My girls really prefer it if we bed in shavings or saw dust, but it does make it difficult to dispose of. There are a number of good papers available on the web regarding composting of the shavings which I think I would ultimately like to move to. Basically, the saw dust and/or shavings require quite a bit of nitrogen to decompose which is also one of the elements required for good growth of your pasture. So to spread it directly on pasture actually robs the soil of nitrogen. Some will dispute this a little, but it does make some sense to me. Having said this I will spread directly on the pasture occasionally just to get rid of it. The way our place is put together does not give us much room to stockpile so I need to be able to put it somewhere.

We live in kind of a horse centered neighborhood (several breeders and some smaller places similar to ours) so one of the neighbors provides a place to stockpile straw bedding and then the mushroom farmers come and actually purchase it from him. No, I do not know what it is actually worth, I just like to be able to get rid of it. So I make use of that as well.

I have looked at the parasite issue a little and I see various opinions. We do spread on the pasture and our small anecdotal evidence indicates that we do not have a parasite problem (crossing my fingers). We do use a daily wormer (Strongid).

Back to the original spreader question... I did a lot of shoveling on and off the back of the pick up until last year when I finally found a spreader that fell within my price range for our "hobby". I had haunted auctions looking for a PTO driven spreader, but they always went for most of $2000 for the 100-150 bushel variety. The horse hobbyists like ourselves seem to have kept the demand up for these. I finally was getting desperate and was about to drop that kind of cash when my wife found a New Idea No. 19 of unknown vintage for $475 in the locally classified paper. Best cash I have spent since we moved here. It is a nice size to use with either of my tractors. Whatever you do try to hold out for a PTO driven model. It jsut opens up all kinds of possibilities for unloading other than just spreading over the field. Like I said above, I could not take this down to the neighbors pile if it was ground drive.

Here is my set up. I only had a cell phone camera with me when I took this, but you can see our white buildings in the background.

Sounds like I need to find a spreader- cheap!

Our spreader sits next to the barn and gets filled up almost twice a week with 5 stalls using straw. It was advertised as a 125 Bu. spreader 50-60 years ago, but I think I pile more than that on it. It is a nice match for the 9N which does most of the spreading/unloading leaving the 3600 for other duties. I could handle a larger unit with the 3600, but then I would need to hook/unhook all the time and this way I keep an old tractor employed (sort of).

We have friends who manage to stockpile and than run an ad in the spring and fall offering free manure. They load on your truck. It is working for them. I have a spot that is near a driveway (i.e. accessible year round), but away from the buildings/house that I am thinking of building some 10'x10' composting bins so we can stay with shavings all year.

Anyway, Good Luck with your search for a spreader. It sounds like you need one as bad as I did.

Kirk

My girls do the hunter/jumper stuff with a very little cross country thrown in. We might have crossed paths somewhere already.

Kirk

Sounds like I need to find a spreader- cheap!

Fresh stable litter has too many weed seeds to immediately spread on your pasture. With 8 horses grazing 7 acres, the less competition the grass has from weeds the better.

I fill a New Holland 518 spreader every day and either spread it on the "track" or add it to the pile. I have several people who are very happy to get this piled up manure for their gardens and usually reward me with nice vegetables all summer long. Having a front end loader makes it more desirable to these gardeners. If they had to shovel it on both ends they might opt for commercial fertilizer leaving me to garden for myself. Unfortunately this activity is seasonal, spring and fall, and I have a "manure mountain" the rest of the year.

I use the Spalding Fly predators to take care of the fly problem- works great

You have 8 stalls, probably two, maybe 3 will equal one spreader load. You would be better off to pile it and spread it on the entire 7 acres once in the spring and once in the fall. So that way you have enough to put a good layer over the entire 7 acres. If your scared the horses would get sick or whatnot, after you spread it wait a week or two until it has worked itsself into the ground after a couple good rains.

Or option two, if you are gettin plenty of rain, each month just spread it on a different part of the field rotating to a different area each month.

If i was close to ya id take it with no problem. I get horse manure now from 3 different stables, one has 12 stalls, one has 24 and one as 32. The 24 stall has 80 acres,and the 32 stall has 110 acres instead of spreading the manure to save on fertlizer cost they pay big money for the fertilizer, and or turkey manure on there hay fields. They clean it out the stalls and pile it up and then in the spring and fall i swing buy and get it and spread it on my pasture and hayfields.

As far as the sawdust and shavings thats all i bed my cattle and horses with, i go through 3 tandem loads of saw dust a month. Soil test every year, ground doesnt need anything.

Seven acres and 8 horses is a pretty high load. You can't spread fresh manure on pasture the horses are grazing without causing parasite problems, even with a de-worming regimen. Plus, unless you let the manure rot for a while, it only raises the PH of your pastures to a point where it's no longer beneficial for the grass.

First look at your bedding and cleaning procedures. It sounds to me like there's a lot of waste. With only 8 animals you really shouldn't be creating that big of a pile every month. I run a training barn with 18 12'x14' stalls, and I don't create near that much. One 55 bushel spreader every 2 weeks. How careful are your girls in separating the good from the bad bedding? Do you have stall mats? That cuts down on bedding waste a lot. We bed in a pelleted softwood that is terrific. Easy to separate the road apples from the bedding, and is highly absorbent. More expensive to buy, but lasts a long, long time. One bag a week per horse, at most, in a stall with mats.

The other option you may look into is switching to straw if there is a mushroom farmer nearby who'll come pick it up from you.