Gardeners are always banging on about how good horse dung is for growing plants, but why only horse dung?
Considering cows have pretty much the same diet you’d expect their turds to have pretty much the same nutrient content. Sheep too.
Maybe its a convenience thing - horse dumps come in handy, solid lumps that don’t smell too bad whereas cowpats are squishy and stinky. Also what about human’s crap? Is it just too toxic to even consider putting on plants? What about a human with a good diet?
A lot comes down to consistency, as you say, but their are hygiene reasons as well. A lot of zoos make money selling elephant manure for gardens.
In the third world, human shit is often used as fertilizer. This spreads many nasty human to human diseases quite efficiently.
I also believe it has something to do with the respective animals digestion. Cows ruminate, and manage to break down almost all the cellulose to starches->sugar, whereas if you look at horse-poo you notice the fibrous nature.
I believe that horse manure is heat treated (‘burned’) before being used as fertiizer. I’m not sure what this does, but it must be more than just sanitizing. Maybe it kills plant de-composing enzymes?
Rotted cow shit is a very good fertilizer.
Horse manure isn’t very ‘strong’, so it can be applied directly to the soil around the plants without fear of chemically burning the delicate roots, also, the fibrous nature acts as a siol conditioner - worms and other organisms take the undigested plant matter down into the soil, resulting in better drainage and aeration.
‘Strong’ manures, such as from poultry must either be applied very sparingly or can be used to activate the composting of bulky organic material such as straw or wood shavings.
You don’t have to burn horse manure to use it as fertilizer-- we used to have horses, and some friends of ours who had a small organic farm used to come shovel away the poop to put on their plants. It would generally get to rot for a bit before they came to get it, though. We just dumped it on a pile in the barnyard and they’d come take it away.
I’m not clear on what about horse manure is not ‘strong’. If cats crap in your flowerbed, it’s not good for the plants. Is this just the difference between herbivores and carnivores, and if so, what exactly is the chemical difference?
As for chicken poop… the stuff that comes out of birds is actually a mix of poop and pee. In birds it all comes out the same hole. Pee is not generally good for plants.
I’ve used rotten cow and sheep manure for my garden. Not to mention fish emulsion. I believe it comes down to nitrogen content and the potential to “burn” the plants.
Any dung is good. Can’t think of any a farmer would reject, except human, and that’s only among the educated. In most parts of the world it’s great, but of course spreads major diseases.
I bury my dog’s feces at the base of various plants – not vegetables, but decorative plants and flowers and such. It works quite well as fertilizer.
I always heard that feces from carnivorous animals was bad as fertilizer because of the parasite it carries. I might be wrong about it, but it sounds reasonable to me. Also, a gardener once told me that rabbit droppings are the BEST fertilizer for gardens.
it pretty much is the difference between herbivores and carnivores; the carnivore diet generally contains a lot more protein and salts and a lot less fibre and cellulose than the herbivore diet and so the mix of waste products is quite different. Carnivore poo does contain useful plant nutrients, but generally in so high a concentration that it can damage plant tissues.
Again, pee contains nitrates and phospates and in the correct dilution, these are essential to proper plant growth and development, but the correct dilution is nothing like that which emerges from a chicken’s cloaca.
Cattle manure is used quite extensively where it is abundant. My dad tells a story of an old miser he knew as a kid that would go around his fence row with a shovel and a wagon. He would scoop up the manure from ACROSS the fence for himself. The old penny pincher was literally “stealing shit”.
Don’t know how relevant that story is but I always found it amusing. The old man died awhile back…he was worth (no one knows for sure) assets included, millions of $$$. He lived in a shack but had a huge herd of cattle, plus land, land and more land and the greenest hay in East Texas. 
Pretty much any manure needs to compost for a while before it’s safe to put on your garden; the nitrogen needs to break down so it doesn’t “burn” your plants. Any herbivorous animal’s manure is fine to use: I use goat because I get it free, but cow, sheep, chicken, llama, rabbit, etc., is fine. I was actually under the impression that horse manure was less desirable, because more seeds pass though than with ruminants, or birds with gizzards.
Normally, it’s too full of exciting bacteria to use, but if you invrst in a composting toilet you can poop ‘n’ scoop with no problems.
Marijuana growers use bat guano for fertilizer. Go ahead, make a joke.
Actually, sewage sludge is being tried for composting in several areas in the US. It appears that there are problems with pathogens (who’d have guessed?) but that otherwise it’s a fairly effective fertilizer.
Pig manure is widely used here, to the extent that its starting to have environmental effects.
Fish emulsion is also pretty good.
Its all got to do with the something-something-something ratio… ya know, like 4-5-2. Anyone know what those are?
Those numbers are the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium in any given sample of fertilizer, whether organic or synthetic. You can find many different number combinations. Some work better for certain plants, while others are a good general-purpose food.
My mom got some fertilizer once that had chicken manure in it. The dog kept trying to eat it.
When I was a young cat, there was a fellow who ran a local fundie church, his farm and a septic tank cleaning business. He’d clean out the sludge from your tank, and want to pray with you. :dubious:
The sludge was taken to his farm and spread on the fields. I doubt this practice would be legal now. Almost every year, he would manage to grow these ginormous pumpkins, and would carve John 3:16 into the pumpkin face for the newspaper photo.