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 Post subject: Racetrack manure
PostPosted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 9:54 am 
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Joined: Wed Aug 06, 2003 8:31 pm
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Location: NYC z7
I emailed the facilities manager of the local racetrack (Belmont) about their horse manure. He said that they dont give it away to the public because it has straw in it and the horses are medicated. Now I know that straw in manure is great for composting but did he have a point about the medication?

Thanks.


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 5:42 pm 
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Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 9:18 pm
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Location: McKinney,TEXAS
Fito-
I'm not sure what point he was making about the straw but the medication comment was probably a protection measure on his part. To give you a similar example, there are two chemicals, picloram and chlorperalid (sp) which are found in herbicides being used to treat the hay that horses and cattle eat. We have found that these chemicals don't break down during composting. The result is no seed germination in your garden next planting season. There are law suits going on over this as we type.
Tony M


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 5:59 pm 
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Location: Dallas,TEXAS
The main (legal) medications used on horses at the track are furosemide (Lasix - a diuretic) and butazolidine - a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory akin to Motrin. Besides these, many of the horses are on antibiotics -which are excreted in the urine and feces - and this could kill the flora of your compost just like the herbicides kill the seeds. What a shame - those horses really don't need all those antibiotics....


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 18, 2003 8:39 am 
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Location: Odenville,Alabama
That sounds like a bunch of political "b.s." (or "horse s." in this case) to me! (LOL)

I collect tons of horse manure/sawdust in my pickup truck for my hot compost piles weekly, from a local equine clinic. All the horses are on medications of some kind. The top vets at the clinic have assured me that all the medicines that they use are totally biodegradable. Plus most of the medicine is consumed in the horses' body before they poop. Then in the most extreme cases, the most dangerous residual medicines are totally broken down in the hot steamy mountain of horse manure/hay/sawdust in 3-7 days anyway. Well, that is plenty of time for any hot composter, because it takes at least 14-21 days to make a speedy mature compost anyway for me.

Plus all the wood sawdust or shavings used by equine clinics or race tracks, is totally safe untreated wood products. It is totally illegal, plus deadly to horses and other farm animalsa, to use treated wood these days.

Check out this article I wrote on animal manures for more info:
http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/orga ... 28156.html

So in my opinion, horse manure is one of the best manure ingredients you can find for any hot composting process.

_________________
The entire Kingdom of God can be totally explained as an Organic Garden (Mark 4:26)
William Cureton


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