My husband just spread 5 yr old horse manure on our vegetable garden. Given the fact that much horse dewormer, etc is used, is it safe? When he brought it home in the trailer, i assumed the intent was for the flower garden. tks.
I sure wouldn't worry about it. Soil acids, bacteria and composting would have nuetralized any trace bad stuff years ago.
Worked very well for our cabbages. Not so sure about our potatoes. We have wireworms, and I'm not sure if they came with the manure or were already in the soil. Carl
Pinenut, were your potatoes planted in recently turned over sod? Wireworms are usually a problem in such soils and should diminish with time.
No. Sandy clay enriched(?) with rotted manure, tilled in yearly for about 5 years. Wireworms aren't getting any worse that I've noticed, but they sure aren't going away either. Sorry Julysunshine. Didn't mean to hijack your thread. Carl
Hi Julysunshine, If the manure was actively managed to compost (i.e temperature monitored, pile was aerated, moisture levels monitored, good balance of N:C ratio) you should have nothing to worry about it terms of residual de-wormer, especially after 5 years. If the pile was aerated (turned) this would have introduced oxygen into the pile of manure as well exposed much of it to daylight both of which speeds up the decomposition of de-wormers. The most common de-wormer is Ivermectin. If you look at the MSDS data sheet for it under Section 12: Ecological Information you will see that it photodegrades (breaks down with daylight) and is metabolized in the soil (probably by soil micro organisms like bacteria). Ivermectin does not bio-accumulate or persist in the environment and it is not taken up by plants from the soil. Composting the manure (instead of applying it raw) ensures that your earthworm population (and related worms) aren't negatively affected by any residual de-wormers that may be present. Hope you had good results with it. ManureMaiden Langley Environmental Partners Society (LEPS) www.manurelink.com
If I were feeding manure from de-wormed horses to my worms, I would not worry about it after it sat like six months. If it is well turned and managed it would be ok in like three. Since it was already done just dig around, if you see worms, at all, it is fine! The de-wormer anyway, is having no effect and is gone. :D
Having a horse farm I deal a lot with the storage and moving of poop. I will preface this by saying I haven't done research into the chemical properties or toxicity this is just first hand observations. Horses produce about 50 lbs a day, they are wormed generally every 8 weeks- sometimes longer (a few tbsp's of wormer). That means in 3000 lbs of poop there will be 100 lbs that may contain a slight amount of wormer residue. The wormers are specifically targeted to insect larvae, different wormers for different species. We have 3 appproximately 5 yard concrete eco block bays that we rotate the composting manure (and spf bedding) through. It takes about 3 months to fill all 3 bays at which time it is hauled out to a local nursery (or others). The most composted sections are always full of earthworms that have volunteered from adjacent ground, crawled in and rapidly multiplied so who ever gets our manure gets a lot of worms. I stock piles in several areas around the property and give it another 6 months or so before I add to vegetable and flower beds. My sister who is a wholesale perrenial grower is always amazed at how fast my gardens took off and now takes several loads of our green every year.
