|
I'm not sure the quantities you are producing, but I tried an experiment at our farm, making compost. I like pine sawdust the best for bedding, and although I've been around the horse crowd all my life, I'll not try and figure some of these people out, when it comes to things like bedding, hay, feed, and whatever. I'm fortunate at our place people are more on the sensible side, but it was a struggle to convince them that compost was a good thing, they balked at it, it's manure, get rid of it, the age old stubborn mentality, right across the street our neighbor collects as much as he can and sells all of it when it's done at $20/ cu. yd. - and why are we not doing this I asked ? LOL most of what he gets comes from us and with the price of things this cannot be ignored anymore, hated to cut him off but, but dollars and sense has to be understood here, we have a payroll and other things that never go away. Back to the subject, I made a stock pile of manure and aerated it with our front end loader, we sometimes have 30 to 40 horses at this place spring, summer and fall, down to 11 for the winter and may cut that in 1/2 this year, but there is a steady flow of material. Ater some aeration and cooking time it loses it's fresh manure like qualities and begins to smell good actually, like an oraganic gardening product, but that does not mean it is ready to use yet, it can take a year, but if you can aerate it more often, takes less time. It's a great soil conditioner, but it has to have completed it's break down cycle, or it will steal nitrogen, you will notice this if you plant in material that is not ready. At our place there is a significant amount of manure, and it does take room, I have a small 33 HP challenger tractor, that I carefully use to push up a ramp type stockpile. I'm trying to make it work myself, hopefully with what I've planned it will, we were giving it to our good friend and neighbor, who is very educated about the subject and was selling a nice finished product at $20.00/ cu. yd. delivered, he uses a 1 ton truck and makes small deliveries. We pay at least $800/ month or more for bedding but prefer good old pine sawdust from a mill that uses a circular cutting blade, not a bandsaw, it's easy to pick through, more granular and breaks down into a nice texture. The hay thing is a problem, when the horses don't like the hay, too much gets mixed in, lumps up in the pile, dangerous to run over, as you cannot grade these lumps out, it is nice when that does not happen, but it eventually breaks down too, just takes longer than the rest of the material. Sometimes we have to use sawdust from a place that handles oak and other hardwoods with a bandsaw, they deliver in 20 yd. containers and take manure to make compost as well, I don't like the hardwood as much for compost but it is fine for bedding, no problems associated with bedding except it turns black so quickly and is harder to pick through. Bags of shavings are most expensive, in my opinion and with our volume, cost of buying bulk sawdust can be offset by making and selling compost. I bought a 64 F-600 w/80,000 miles, for $1900 that was a grain truck, now I can haul in what makes the best compost, haul out a finished product and can be more selective about hay, sawdust because I can go get it wherever it is. It cost me a few hundred/year to insure under the farm, $90.00 for ag plates, but I can haul 5 ton legally. That old truck will be lucky to see half of that weight, eventually I'll have to upgrade to something newer and more suited for highway travel, but so far it looks good to turn a profit from making compost. Next is to get some analyzed by Cornell and see how I am doing, I hope to make it a wash with the costs of bedding, that'll be a huge plus, might be some unsightly piles and or windrows around, some extra flies, but it's worth it. I have not had any problems with run off and leachate so far, but it can be an issue in some places. Not the solution for everyone, but I honestly believe it can be done, large or small scale to ones benefit.
|
