You can manage your horse’s manure in an environmentally friendly way, even on a small farm.

Question:

I want to keep my four-acre horse farm as environmentally green as possible. How do I manage my horses’ manure to leave the least impact on the environment?

Answer:

America’s Horse Daily turned to AQHA Educational Marketing Alliance Partner Country Living Association for the answer.

To manage stockpiled manure on small farms, abide by good practice rules to keep nuisance and environmental issues to a minimum. Here are a few good management tips:

• Keep the manure as dry as possible.

• Remove manure from the farm regularly during fly breeding season.

• Try not to use insecticides or larvacides; naturally occurring fly predators – tiny, nonstinging wasps and parasites are actually beneficial to the pile.

• When cleaning out the storage, leave a couple of inches of dry manure over the bottom of the storage area to provide a population of fly parasites and predators. Manure removal can be staggered to leave one section per week to supply fly predators and parasites.

• Remove a winter’s stockpile of manure during cold weather (less than 55 degrees Fahrenheit) before fly breeding season.

Don’t forget that manure needs to be removed from corrals and barnyard areas. Sacrifice areas must be regularly cleaned to reduce flies, odor and the potential for mud. Sacrifice areas include dry lots, turnout areas, exercise yards, corrals, paddocks and other areas that are sacrificed from the grazing system and used to confine animals to protect pastures from overuse at critical times.

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