Goat Manure, a Bonus Resource
Whenever my husband and I wear ourselves out cleaning one of our goat barns, we console ourselves with the thought that we’re not cleaning a barn, we’re making compost for the garden. Composted goat manure is high in fertilizer value that’s perfect for flower beds, vegetable gardens, or fruit and nut trees.
Unlike cows, which poop patties, goats make tidy round balls. Goat keepers fondly call them “goat berries” or “nanny berries.” A frustrating aspect of dairy goats is that they aren’t house broken. You’d think they’d do their business while out in the yard, but no. The first thing a herd does upon entering the barn is to let loose with bucket loads of goat berries and gallons of urine.
Each day each goat produces about 1¼ pounds of manure and 1¼ pounds (2½ cups) of urine. Exactly how much manure and urine each goat produces depends on the animal’s size, how much it eats and drinks, and whether it is also losing fluids through lactation.
Bedding plus manure plus urine adds up to many tons per year, which becomes pretty obvious when you’re moving manure-soiled bedding with pitchforks, rakes, and shovels. A question my husband and I half-jokingly ask each other during barn cleaning is, “How many tons do you suppose we’ve moved today?”
Depending on the type of bedding used, and its ratio to manure and urine, goat barn cleanings have estimated values of nitrogen l.3, phosphorus l.5, and potassium 0.4. Thick, absorbent bedding soaks up and saves urine, which contains some 50% of the excreted nitrogen and around 75% of the potassium.
Many goat keepers clean out their barns in the fall on the theory that their goats spend more time indoors during cold weather, so their shelter should start out clean. Others leave the dairy barn bedding and manure-pack until spring, to provide extra warmth during winter months.
Because we clean our barns by hand, we lighten the load by doing it twice a year: in spring, to provide cooler bedding during hot summer months, and again in early fall, allowing enough time for the fresh bedding to heat up before cold weather arrives.
Between times we rake off the top (usually consisting of loose hay spread by the goats) and add a layer of fresh bedding. We used to bed with pine shavings, which are extremely slow to decompose and therefore don’t make good compost. Now we use poplar shavings, which decompose must quicker than pine to create a nicely textured humus.
As it decomposes, bedding containing fresh manure ties up elements needed for plant growth. So instead of applying it directly to our garden, we add it to our compost pile.
Compared to freshly gleaned barn bedding, well-rotted bedding is richer in nutrients that are readily usable by growing plants. It has fixed nitrogen that’s not as easily lost as the soluble nitrogen of fresh manure, and the greater solubility of phosphate and potash makes both more immediately available for plant growth. While the nutrients release fairly rapidly — usually during a single growing season — the humus value of composted goat bedding lasts for at least three years.