Composting manure

What is the best, most efficient way to compost horse manure? I see some people cover it, some don't . Some insist shavings are needed. If so, would wood chips suffice? Does any add quicklime? Gypsum? Should it be piled high? Compressed? How often turned? etc.

Thanks

I don't think I would be adding wood shaving if I wanted to speed up the composting. Just pile it up , and turn it often , the more air that gets into the pile , the faster in will break down .

A little more info would be helpful, we used shavings in barns, but straw for mares foals and stallions, that went into a separate pile for mushroom growers, the shavings we dumped in a pile in a area proably close to an acre if not more, we cleaned 90 stalls per day on shavings until they went over to straw, the manure was dumped on that pile for 24 years, they would doze it up higher to have room to keep dumping, it rotted very nice over the years, in 2013 they sold 7000 yards of nice brown rotted manure. Depends how fast you want it to rot, and what you use for bedding.

Here in NH the commercial operations put it in windrows of approx. six feet high and ten feet wide, which get turned every week or so to keep it aerated so that the aerobic bacteria can breath. You don't want any lime, as it will kill the bacteria. You don't cover it because you want oxygen. So far as the mix, climate and weather dictate what you may need to add. You need some shavings to the point of being able to hold air, but not so much that the pile dries out. You should contact your local extension office. They can give you a lot of info.

Jim,
Neighbor uses sawdust in his stalls. His horses generate about 6 cubic yards of road apples and sawdust each month which he is happy to get rid of and I'm happy to haul it away. The poo has very little fertilizer in it, but the wet sawdust, horse pee, is full of everything, N, P, K even calcium.

Google pee, you will find some are even thinking it makes a great liquid fertilizer. The wet sawdust if full of it.

My research I found it takes N to jump start composting of leaves which I add to my mulch pile in fall. Composting leafs removes N in the beginning. Grass clippings are full of fertilizer. People that bag their grass are removing nutrients from lawn. Grass decomposes very fast.

I add wood chips I get from tree trimmers. My neighbor's son started a stump grinding business. He brings me woodchips and some dirt. That's the best thing to add to compost pile. Woodchips are somewhat like leafs, takes a little nitrogen in the beginning, but long term benefits outweigh the loss.

Now to answer your question, keep it wet and PhD. Pile it higher and deeper to help trap the heat generated when composting. If my compost is dry, I will spread it out and let it get wet when it rains, then keep it PhD over the winter. It takes about a year to compost. Getting it hot will kill weed seeds. Composting is done when it no longer makes heat, steaming horse smell.

I use my terramites to pile it about 8 ft. Also by piling that high when I blend in other things, I put a scoop of each one at a time on the pile. As it rolls down, they get blended together.

I recently added 12 yards of compost to garden and neighbor used his tiller to blend it in. I do buy Ag lime and add a little. Not really sure lime improves composting as much as water and Nitrogen. Some say add 46-0-0 to compost to speed things up, but I'm too cheap. Wet sawdust works well for me.

geo.

Just pile it and keep aerating it. Turn it at least once a week and it'll break down fast.

As everyone says,pile it up and turn 2 to 4 times a month. There's little need to add anything other than water. For higher quility material,windrow horse manure and shavings just as it come's from stall,add red wigglers,cover with carpet,keep it damp then set back while worms work their magic. I add new manure at one end of windrow as finished material is removed from other. Worms reproduce so fast you will soon have plenty to sell or give away.

I have been composting horse manure for years. I do not turn it over all that much but I do pile it high and try to keep it wet. I also feed the horse hay in such a way to have them waste about 1/4 of it so the compost has a lot of old hay in it.

For whatever reason mine seems to get piled while it is wet and has lots of hay mixed in with it. I never turn mine, but I am also in no big hurry for it to compost. After six months its a nice pile of rich earth.

The only issue I have is the chickens love to scratch at the pile usually tearing apart the old hay on the surface so it doesn't compost. The fruit trees down the hill from the compost pile have started growing at a very increased rate since the compost pile went in.

I turn my pile when I'm adding to it, leafs, grass, stump grindings. Today I had two loads of stump grindings, dirt and woodchip. I flattened my pile with front loader and mixed in stump grindings. We later got a down pour. It should be wet enough to pile back up. Wood chips will get very warm too.

Definitely need water and heat to kill all the weed seeds and properly cook the road apples.