If poop is all the stuff that comes out after animals have taken all the nutrients, how can possibly be a good nutrient for plants? I’m not arguing that it isn’t, it obviously is. But does that mean that sh*t might actually be nutritious to us? Is there some secret Illuminati conspiracy to keep us from learning the healing powers of poo? I still won’t eat it, though, if it is good for you. Just wondering…
What’s nutritious to a plant isn’t necessarily nutritious to us. If you’re a plant or a dung beetle, please ignore this post.
Altough not all manure is good plant food some is. For Example a 1000 lb cow wil produce about15 tons of manure per year. This 15 tons of manure contains about 213lbs. of nitrogen 192lbs of phosphate and 267 lbs potassium. All three are excellant plant foods but have little benifit or may even be harmful to humans.It is all a matter of what is considered nutrients for plants is not considered nutrients fo animals and vica versa.
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http://www.uaf.edu/coop-ext/publications/freepubs/LPM-00340.pdf
For the most part, plants manufacture the actual food that they require by means of photosynthesis (using water and CO[sub]2[/sub] as raw ingredients) and they use chemicals in the manure to build other chemicals such as proteins; calling manure ‘plant food’ is a bit of a misnomer really because it is more like ‘plant food and growth ingredients’.
Animals, for the most part, don’t manufacture their own food; they steal it from other organisms, ultimately plants (mostly).
To expand on what Mangtout said. ‘Plant food’ basically consists of ingredients from which plants can build complex organic molecules using solar energy: nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and a whole range of metal ions etc. Animal food basically consists of complex molecules which can be broken down to provide energy. In a highly simplistic form the plants construct complex molecules which animals then break down into simple molecules. The plants use these simple molecules to construct complex mlecules again.
So manure can’t readily be used as animal food because most of the complex molecules have already been broken down. There just isn’t any more energy left. Dung beetles and other organisms make their living off the bacterial mass and indigestible fibre left over in animal dung.