 Today we have our horse management webinar series, the end of our spring series, that will be on bedding and manure management. We have a video of Dr. Carrie Hammer, who's done the research on the bedding for horses, and she will be the one that we get to watch here today. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to join us in person, so we're going to watch her video, if there are any questions, we'll save those towards the end, and if we're unable to answer them, then we will forward them on to Carrie. The other one we have is our manure management portion of it, which, as you guys know, Mary Keena is the person who usually talks about that, and she will be joining us here later in the hour to talk about the manure management and bedding management once it's done being used. Hi, everybody. I'm so glad that I can be here today to talk with you a little bit about equine bedding, what's your horse sleeping on? And I am really sorry that I can't be there in person for this webinar, but I am really glad that I am able to do this recording and be able to share this information with you virtually. So if I put up this picture of this horse sleeping in this stall or this run-in and asked you to think about bedding, what would you think about? What images would come to mind? What types of products would you envision? And what would you think about why you would use bedding? So just think about that a little bit because those are some of the topics that we're gonna talk about today. And more specifically, we're gonna talk about the reasons why we might want to use bedding. We'll talk about what makes good qualities for bedding. We're gonna talk about some of the different bedding materials and then do some comparisons amongst those materials. And I'll give you some final thoughts at the end to kind of to wrap it all up. So if we start with this first part, reasons on why we'd wanna use some bedding. I told you to kind of be thinking about that. So do you have some ideas on why you'd wanna use bedding? And obviously I can't call on anyone or have you shout them out, although you could shout it out right now. But I'll give you my list on some of the reasons why we'd wanna use bedding. And these are kind of the main ones. So we wanna absorb liquid moisture that's in the stall. Usually that's due to urine, but it could also be due to spilled water, rain, if there's some drainage that comes in through that area, anything that might be liquid that you'd wanna keep the horse from getting wet. We want bedding to be able to provide comfort or cushion for the horse. Maybe our main goal is to provide some warmth or reduce drafts, especially drafts that occur kind of at that floor level. And then one that we don't always think about is protection of the stall floor. So some of the stalls can get damaged if they are wet and have moisture trapped along the surface. And so being able to prevent that can be helpful. We also need to talk a little bit about what makes good bedding material. So not everything is a great bedding to use in a horse stall. We want our bedding to be comfortable for the horse. It should be absorptive. It should minimize odor. We don't want it to be slippery. So we don't want the horse to injure themselves as they're getting up and down. It should be easy to store at our facility. Should also be easy to dispose of and or compost depending on how you handle your waste at your facility. Going along with absorptive, it should be dry and sanitary, dust and mold free. And unappetizing. So we don't want it to be palatable and be something that our horses are gonna eat and consume. Now this is a pretty long list and I'll tell you right off as you think about this, there's no bedding that is gonna meet every single one of these as a perfect criteria. So we have to think about that as an owner on what we are willing to deal with or give up in terms of working within our horse facility. I also asked you to think at the start of this presentation a little bit about the common horse bedding materials. And this is my list, straw products, wood products, peat moss, paper products. There's some different seed holes. I listed a few, flax, rice, sunflower. There's hemp products, ground corn cobs and there's more, there's lots of things that can be used for bedding materials and horse stalls. These are probably some of the most common that we'll find. And not all of these are super common to our area here in North Dakota, but they may be common in other areas around the US and in other areas overseas in different countries. Now I know not everybody's familiar with all the products on those lists, so I'm gonna talk about a few of the more common ones just to make sure that we're talking about the same things. So first of all, if I start with straw, it's really important that you know the difference between hay and straw. So this picture here, I hope everybody can discern. One is more yellow and kind of fibrous looking. The other is more green and kind of grass leaf looking. So the one on the right, the green is gonna be hay. And that is a product that is grass cut in the growing stage. It will still have the strong nutrition that we want for our horses to be able to utilize for growth and maintenance. On the other hand, straw, which is the picture on the left, which is more yellow in color. It's more fibrous. Actually, if you'd pick up those stems of those plants and looked at those straw materials, you'd see that they're hollow. And it is not a nutritious product. It is a product that we're using right on our stall floor. We don't want it to provide nutrition to the horse. And it's not something that we want them to be using to meet their calories. And so it's important to know those differences because one, we're gonna use as bedding. And one we're gonna use to feed our horses. So when we're talking about bedding, we're gonna be talking about straw and some of the different straw products. Wheat straw and oat straw are the two most common. Picture on the left would be what that straw would look like. And then the straw can also be made into pellet form. And so that's wheat straw pellets on the right. And so that's a product that's been ground up and mixed with some liquid material then forced through a dye to make the pellet form. When we talk about wood products, there's different classifications within that. A lot of times we just talk about wood shavings or wood chips, but there are two different categories and they relate to the size and kind of feel of that product. And those different categories will have different characteristics that go along with them. So on the far left, we have wood shavings. And just as the name implies, they are a piece of wood that has shaved pieces off of it. In the middle are wood chips. And so these are kind of bigger chunks of wood. And then on the far right is sawdust. So the finest of the three and the smallest little fiber pieces. It is ground much more finely than the other two. And usually when we're talking about wood products, we're talking about pine shavings and pine wood products. You can get the same shavings, chips and sawdust made from hardwoods, but in general we tend to avoid those for horses. And usually most of the commercially available products are pine products. Let's talk a little bit about paper products. So two pictures on the left of your screen are different newsprint. So one is kind of made into strips and one, the newsprint is made more into chunks. The picture on the right is corrugated cardboard. So we have both newsprint kind of paper products as well as cardboard in terms of paper products. And then we have some of our other bedding materials, peat moss. I think most people are probably more familiar with this in terms of maybe gardening and landscaping, but it actually can be used for horse bedding as well and has some great characteristics. Flax is another one. That's one of the seed holes that is used for bedding. Sunflower holes is another one that is somewhat common in this area, but the flax bedding is small fibrous pieces of the flax plant. It's a byproduct of flax processing. All right, so now that you're kind of familiar with those different bedding formulations or different bedding products, let's talk about them in terms of absorbency. I said this is one of the main characteristics that we look for is how absorbent is that bedding? Will it absorb the liquid that's in the horse's stall? And if we look at this chart, this lists some of the more common ones, at the top of the list is peat moss. And so it absorbs nine to 10 pounds of water per pound of bedding, by far and above, way above any of our other bedding products. The more common ones we think of in terms of our wood products and straw, show up kind of in that middle range, the two to three range in terms of pounds of water held per pound of bedding. You'll also notice at the bottom of this list is our shredded newspaper, at 1.6 pounds of water per pound of bedding. So if you take this as a summary, peat moss by far and above the best in terms of absorbency, shredded newspaper, at the bottom of the list, our wood products and our regular straw in terms of odor wheat straw is kind of in the middle. We look at straw pellets, they're a little bit better, 4.5 pounds of water per pound of bedding compared to just the straw long product itself. One thing that we also need to think about is how easy is this bedding to work with, right? You're the one who's gotta clean the stalls and if you're not, if it's not easy to clean the stalls, you're not gonna wanna do it. And so we think of bedding in terms of ease of use or cleaning ease. When we look at that comparison, don't have quite as many studies that look at as many of the different bedding types. So this list is a little bit shorter. But we'll see that we kind of have them broken into three groups. Those that fall into the easiest to clean, our peat moss, our straw pellets, the flax bedding and our sawdust. So those are the easiest to clean. Our middle group that's kind of moderately easy to clean are our wood products, the wood shavings and the wood chips and the shredded cardboard. And then at the bottom of the list, our hardest to clean is our straw. So both the oat and wheat straw fall at the bottom of that list there. And I should state that this has to do with in terms of cleaning stalls by hand. So this isn't taking into account how easy it might be to run through with a skid loader or something more mechanical. So this is you going into that stall with your pitchfork or shovel and a wheelbarrow to clean out the bedding material and make that stall ready for the next day or the next horse that's coming in. Another thing to think about is how bedding affects the health of our horse. And one of the main concerns we have with bedding with regards to health is how it affects our horse's lungs. And this usually has to do with dustiness or how much dust is created by that bedding and by the horse moving around in their stall. And that dustiness of a bedding is related to the particle size. So the smaller the particles are the greater the airway irritation. So the easier it is for the horse to inhale those smaller particles, the easier it is for those particles to get lower into the airways or into the lungs and cause more problems for the horse. When we look at our different products, our paper products and our pelleted products are the best. So they tend to have the least amount of particles that can irritate the airways. Our straw products are kind of in the middle and the wood shavings are at the bottom. Now having said that, straw is kind of in the middle there and so you would think that straw is better than wood shavings. However, straw is also prone to mold and so the higher the percentage of mold, the greater the airway irritation. So clean straw is better than wood shavings but dusty older moldy straw is gonna be worse than our wood shavings. And when I'm talking about wood shavings, I'm kind of lumping them into a group of both shavings and chips together, okay? Obviously sawdust has even smaller particle size so it can even be more dusty than the shavings and chips. And like I said, straw prone to mold so that can cause even greater airway irritation. So if we think about the best bedding for airway issues and so when I talk about airway issues, I'm referring to horses that have problems with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, allergies. Some of our horses have seasonal allergies that may be more compounded or irritated during certain seasons but for those horses, no bedding tends to work best. So no bedding or rubber mats as an option but that's not an option for everyone and there's reasons why no bedding doesn't work either. So if you've got cement floors, if you've got slippery floors, if you have older horses that have trouble getting up and down, you're definitely gonna need some bedding in there. So if you need to use some bedding, paper or some of the pelleted products, whether that's flax pellets, whether that's straw pellets, those are all good options for our horses that have allergies related to lung issues. Now this doesn't address other allergies that might occur that tend to be contact allergies and that can be super individual per horse. So when this I'm talking about the airway allergy issues that result in the horses that cough when they're stabled and cough when they're inside. Horses can have contact allergies where they might break out in hives. So you might see that horses that lay down in certain beddings get hives either along their belly or along their side depending on what's touching that material. And for that, it's just dependent. Just like us as humans, different things cause allergies for us. Different horses can have allergies to different beddings. So while one horse might be able to sleep in straw, another horse might need to sleep in wood shavings and another horse potentially paper product. It is very individualized with those contact allergies. Another one of the health concerns related to bedding has to deal with our horses hooves. Bedding can be drying. And if our horses hooves dry out, they're more apt to get chips along the surface and cracks both of which can be bad. And so you wanna try and avoid that. But on the other hand, certain beddings can be really wet and have a high moisture content. And if you have that increased moisture that the horse is standing on, it decreases the barrier function of the hoof and predisposes it to bacteria organisms getting in there, which we usually know as the disease condition thrush. So they're more predisposed to having thrush if they're in a high moisture area. So you can have both sides of this problem depending on different beddings. Wood products and sand tend to be the most drying. And especially I mentioned one of those earlier slides about the different wood products and sometimes hardwood gets used. Hardwood bedding products will be the most drying. Pine wood products are a little bit better, but they're still gonna be more drying than some of the other bedding products that we listed earlier. On the other hand, straw and paper tend to get wet very quickly and especially if they're not cleaned frequently. And those are gonna predispose horses to having thrush. So horses that stand in stalls with shaving may have an issue with increased cracks and dryness of their feet, but horses that stand in straw or paper bedding, especially if it's not cleaned frequently are more apt to have thrush or problems kind of with that spongy or mushy hoof capsule that comes from standing in a high moisture environment. We also need to talk a little bit about bedding as it relates to horse behavior. And one of those horse behaviors has to do with eating their bedding. So that's palatability, right? How tasteful is that bedding? How much does that horse wanna eat it because it tastes really good? And when we think about the list of bedding materials that I presented earlier, of those straw has the highest palatability. And of those straw products, oat is even bigger than wheat. So horses are gonna be most apt to eat oat bedding than wheat bedding and then on down the list. It's really important if you're gonna bed with straw, that it's a true straw product that has had the grain harvested. So straw where it actually is allowed to keep the heads on the plant material. So there's actual oats or actual wheat grain within the bedding is gonna be an even bigger problem in terms of consumption. And bedding isn't gonna work in terms of its absorption capacity or its comfort capacity if the horse is eating it. On top of that straw, because it's really highly fibrous can cause some problems with regards to impaction, constipations and things like that if the horses are not chewing it correctly and ingesting enough water. Another factor to consider with horse behavior is lying time. So how often does the horse lay down and how long do they stay laying down? They've done some good research on this and shown that horses that are bedded with straw will lay down more often and longer than horses that are bedded with straw pellets. And when you look at the comparison with wood shavings that falls in between the two. So straw the lie down the most, pellets they'll lie down the least and wood shavings in between. And that's important because we know that there's health issues if horses are unable to truly lie down and sleep well. We know and we often talk about horses being a species that can sleep standing up. They have what's known as the stay apparatus that helps lock. It's a system of tendons and ligaments that helps lock their legs in place so that they can sleep standing up but they can't sleep standing up forever. And we've learned that they have to be able to lay down at some point and get some good restful sleep. So you want your horses to feel comfortable enough that they will lay all the way down onto their sides, onto their bellies and have a good nap and not just sleep standing up. Some other considerations to think about are falling. So if you're gonna have mayors that are having foals then shavings and newsprint aren't ideal, okay? And this is when I'm talking about foaling, I'm talking about the act of giving birth itself. So once the foal is born and it's dried off, they can be in basically any type of bedding material. But that initial act of giving birth where they're delivering a wet foal, if you think about that, if you've got a wet, slimy newborn foal, kind of likes in the picture there, if they are bedded in shavings, those shavings stick all over the foal. And even worse, if you think about newsprint, think back to when you were in elementary school and you used to make things with paper mache where you'd get the pieces of newspaper soaked in glue and then apply it to something. That's kind of what happens when you have a foal that's born in a stall that's bedded with shredded newsprint or shredded newspapers. Is that amniotic fluid that's around that foal is kind of that thick gooey material, kind of like glue, and it just sticks newsprint all over them, which isn't ideal. Doesn't mean it can't be done. Definitely have foals that are born in shavings and newsprint, but it will get stuck on them. It will stick around their nose. And so you just wanna make sure that their noses are clear, that their eyes are clear, that the umbilical area gets cleaned well. And because of that, straw is probably the most preferred bedding for foaling. And then a lot of people, once the foal is born, go ahead and clean that stall out and then move them to maybe a different bedding material. We're looking at drafts. So if you've got stalls that kind of have some gaps through them and so you get a little bit of breeze that blows along at the ground level, then straw or the corrugated shredded cardboard work best. And remember I talked about how straw has kind of that hollow shaft in the plant material that helps allow air to be trapped in there to provide some insulation. And the same with corrugated cardboard. That's the cardboard that has the little kind of space in between the two pieces that helps trap air and helps provide warmth. So stalls that are bedded with strong corrugated cardboard often do best for preventing drafts and kind of helping to keep the horses warm at the floor level. Another thing to consider is your flooring material. So harder surfaces require deeper bedding. If you've got a softer stall flooring, whether that's just a kind of dirt floor, whether it's a sand floor, as opposed to maybe a cement floor, you can get by with different amounts of bedding. Now, if you have a stall that has rubber mats, you might not need much bedding on top. And in fact, rubber mats, technically in terms of comfort or cushion, don't need any bedding on top at all. But usually as owners, we wanna be able to provide some bedding for that absorptive capabilities. So being able to absorb the urine off the rubber mats, or if the rubber mats get a little flick, you wanna have some bedding on top of them to help with traction, to keep them from being slippery. A few final thoughts to leave you with in terms of bedding is as an owner, you also wanna think about bedding availability and storage considerations. So is the bedding available in bulk versus bag? So, and not only that, do you have a place to store it? So bulk shavings, when they're delivered, do you have a place to move them and store them? Do you have the machinery to be able to handle that movement of that bulk shavings delivery? If it's coming as bags, do you have the ability to store those bags in a certain place? Availability, so sometimes the bedding type that we wanna use isn't available and or it's cost prohibitive. So some of the beddings are quite expensive and some are cheaper and some are more or less available depending on your area. I mentioned that flax and sunflower hulls are options in our area just because those are crops that are grown here. People in the South are gonna have potentially more availability of cotton hulls. So it is regional dependent on some of that bedding for what's available. And the price associated with that. We also need to think about how much manure and urine our horses produce each day. So it's 50 pounds total, it's about 30 pounds of manure and 20 pounds of urine and that's for a typical 1,000 pound horse. That's 50 pounds total and that doesn't include bedding. So when we add in the bedding, then we're getting closer to 60 to 70 pounds of bedding per day. And that's a horse that's in a stall all day. So that doesn't account for horses that are getting turned out during the day. So you need to make sure that you have waste removal and storage considerations that can deal with that. And I know Mary's gonna talk a little bit later in this webinar about composting. Some of our bedding products are really good for composting. Some of the others are not so good for composting. So if you're gonna be someone who does composting at your facility, then you wanna make sure that you're using a bedding that's appropriate for that. If you are someone who's taking your bedding and your manure and spreading it on a field or you've got another farmer that's coming to pick that up, then you wanna make sure that you're using a bedding that is appropriate for that use. Some of our beddings have different nitrogen compositions and so they're not quite as appropriate to be spread on fields. So maybe they're better taken to a landfill or a different dump site. So all things to think about when you're dealing with your bedding choice. And so finally, I hope that I've made you more confused maybe than ever to know that there isn't a perfect bedding. And so it's gonna depend on different situations. What works for one person might not work for another. What works for one facility might not work for another facility. What one person considers ease of cleaning might not work for another. But what you wanna do is have a bedding that meets your needs for absorption so that the horses aren't standing in liquid and they're not laying down and getting wet. So you want it to be dry. I always tell students what I'm dealing with them, go in and sit in the stall. If your rear end gets wet when you're sitting down then your bedding isn't working or you're not cleaning it frequently enough. So one of the two things are occurring. There's either not enough bedding, it's not getting cleaned frequently enough or it's not doing its job. So make sure that you've got a bedding that's doing that absorption and that you're willing to clean and that you're willing to deal with and that is providing the cushion your horse needs that you can also handle in terms of storage facilities and availability and works within your price range. And all those, like I said, there's beddings that fit all of those at different levels and you have to kind of work through and see what you're willing to kind of give up in terms of considerations to meet the needs for your facility. And with that, I'm gonna wrap it up. I hope you all have had a chance to learn a little bit today. I sure enjoyed being able to share this with you. Thanks everyone. Well, I really liked that video. I got to watch it earlier today to make sure everything was ready to go for everything that we're talking about and I think she covers a vast variety of things here. If you guys have any questions, go ahead and either pop them into the chat or shout them out. But we might keep trucking along here. I have the next PowerPoint and Mary's ready to go and we can certainly save any questions for the end as well. All right, ready to rock and roll. So we are gonna talk about of course my favorite thing, winter management. And I thought Carrie did an awesome job of leading right into it. In fact, I was thinking as she was going through her final thoughts slide, I could literally just take that slide, remove the words bedding and put manure into it and it would fit everything that we usually talk about for manure management as well. There's no perfect manure management system. Everybody's gonna be different depending on your facility and what you have going on. Do you have the storage? Do you have the space? Do you have the equipment? And so a lot of the stuff dealing with bedding just transfers right over into dealing with manure as well. So today we're gonna talk mostly about composting but I do wanna start with why manage manure. And so manure contains valuable nutrients that plants need. Of course, if those nutrients become too much if we either put too much on or we use them at inappropriate times then they become a pollutant. So that's one issue is they become a pollutant but also they're wasted. We're wasting money. And so we don't really want either of those things to happen. So some other manure management considerations then when we're managing our manure we're also managing external parasites like flies, internal parasites like worms, bacteria and pathogens. Potentially if we manage our manure properly we're managing our rodents and some of our odors and weed seeds and of course just visual appearance of your place. So just a few guidelines here before we get into it. So manure stacking or stockpiling guidelines for North Dakota. Again, this is for North Dakota. Minnesotans are quite similar actually. And so I can get those for you. You guys have an awesome manure management team in Minnesota. And so if you do have questions about manure management there I'm happy to point you in the direction of your manure people that can find you your guidelines as well. So short-term manure stockpiles in North Dakota. So short-term means no more than nine months and the same location can not be used from year to year. And so that stockpile is then moved around. This can be edge of field storage or it can be on a farm but it should be moved around from location to location. Permanent manure stockpiles are manure stockpiles that are there for more than nine months and it's stored in that area then all the time. This involves some soil investigation and some regulatory oversight. And so just a couple of things to keep in mind if we're going to continually stack manure. More so I'm concerned about where you're picking those areas. And so whether it's short or long-term when we're looking at them and especially the short-term because there's less of a regulatory oversight on that is just keep in mind that sandy soils have rapid permeability and low-mere clay soils have slower permeability. And so rapid permeability means we're allowing our nutrients through faster and then slower permeability means we're maintaining some of that nitrate or some of that the nutrients in the soil profile. And then of course we want to make sure we're keeping in mind our depth to ground water and the location and surface water where we're picking where we're going to store our manure or potentially make our compost. Okay, so in general these are rules of thumb. Stockpiles cannot be and should not be located in gravel pits, other excavation sites along lakes or streams, flooding. There is so much water in the state right now and which seems absolutely crazy considering last year was a mess. And so in some parts of the state right now flooding is an actual issue. And so we want to make sure this is a great time to go out and look and say, okay, here are areas that are retaining water because it has rained now. And now I know where these areas are. This is where I will not store my manure. And then of course we don't want to store it or place it within 50 feet of a private well or a hundred feet of a public well. So some places you have to cover your manure in North Dakota you do not. And so you can cover it if you want to but that lovely wind we had last week makes it kind of hard. So make sure you're anchoring that securely. We're gonna talk about composting today. And so I just put this in here and that's a live link and I will send these slides out when I send the link out for you guys. So, excuse me. So composting is something that we're gonna talk about in like 10 minutes today, but it is extensive. We could talk about it for hours. And so this course live in person was an eight hour class, this is 13 videos. And so you can go on and look and really dig deeper into all of the things going into composting. So the link here goes to a YouTube playlist where you get 13 videos plus some producer interaction in there as well. Okay, so the benefits of composting. What would be the big three if I was gonna talk to you? I would say we're killing weed seeds, we're killing pathogens and we're killing parasites. So I think that those three things alone should be super awesome. You should like those things. Maybe more than that, you're gonna like the volume reduction that you get. So it's going to shrink down, we're gonna like that. But also the things then that I like for you is we're decreasing nutrient loss and we're increasing nutrient stability. So we're making it a more stable product. Okay, so composting, the way we compost is called thermophilic composting or heat loving decomposition. And so we pile, we mix, we moisten and then we heat our compost up and we have to turn it several times. And so several of you stockpile your manure, which means we put it up one time, we push it into a pile. But with composting, we're gonna make sure we know what the moisture level is and we're gonna turn it several times. So it goes through several heat cycles instead of just one with composting, or sorry, with the stockpiling. So the basics of composting, moisture, we want our moisture to be between 40 and 65%. And so the best way to do that is to know when you're out in the field, where you're at, is do the wet rag test. And so you literally, I put a glove on, stick my hand in the pile, pull it out and I squeeze. If water is coming off my glove, running out to the bottom of what I squeezed, we're over 50%. If water is, if nothing comes out, it crumbles in my hand, we're for sure under 50%. But if we have a little bit of crumbling, but a little, little lumping, and we have a little water that's on our glove, we can see it, but it's not running out, we're probably at around 50%. And that's an ideal place to be because if you're at the 50% mark, you're somewhere in the range of the 40 to 65. For temperature, you can see here in the picture, I have a couple of compost thermometers. And so temperature, ideally 131 is where we're looking. We're killing pathogens, we're killing weed seeds. And so again, a range would be 130 to 160. We don't really wanna go over 160 degrees Fahrenheit because we start killing some of the good or beneficial microorganisms that are in there. And we don't wanna go under that because while it's still breaking down, it's not happening at a rate that is going to kill our pathogens, weed seeds and parasites as quickly. So some mixing tools that we can use. We go from everything you see here in the picture. This is a Turner that we use at the Carrington Research Extension Center. And of course, I don't expect any of you to have a Turner. They're expensive and you need a lot of manure to justify one of those. However, payloader, front end loader, a skid steer, a pitch fork, you can even use a pitch fork. And so, and then there are some turners. So I talk about the big Turner, but there are smaller turners too. More specifically, there's one called an eco mixer and that's for smaller scale operations. And so there are options if you do have a smaller scale operation. Most folks though that have a few horses and what seems to be a lot of manure are using a skid steer or a front end loader. And those work perfectly fine. I do wanna hop back here to this slide. And so Carrie had mentioned, keep in mind if you're gonna be composting or if you're gonna be spreading what kind of material you're using. So if you're turning with a pitch fork and you have bulky material, it's gonna be a little harder to break that down. So you'll still probably see the heat cycles happening, but it's gonna take a little bit longer. And so in the rows here that are on this picture, we use corn stalks and straw as bedding at the center. And of course, those are very big, very bulky, a lot of carbon there, but they're broken down really easily with the turner. Now if I was out turning that with a pitch fork, it would look a lot different. And so let's just keep in mind that wood shavings or wood chips, some of that kind of stuff breaks down a lot easier if we're turning with smaller things. Okay, so mixing helps to maintain the temperature. It also helps to maintain the oxygen levels. And so they kind of go together. So if the oxygen levels are maintained, then the microorganisms are breathing and they're happy, which then they're eating. And so then they're maintaining the temperature. And so every 10 days to two weeks, we're gonna see that temperature spike and then it's gonna start to come back down and we're gonna turn and it's gonna spike and we're gonna come back down. And so the question that I get a lot is, when is it done? So we know everything was correct. We went in with a proper carbon to nitrogen ratio, which is anywhere between 20 to one to 40 to one. So 20 parts carbon to 40 parts carbon to one part of nitrogen. And so we went in with a proper carbon to nitrogen ratio, which most of our horse motor is pretty darn close to that ratio when we send it in for samples. And so horse motor is so easy to compost. So we know that that was correct. We know that we had proper moisture because we did a squeeze test. We know that we mixed it really well and we gave those microorganisms opportunity to eat and enough oxygen to breathe. And so the temperature no longer spikes after turning. And so then we say it's done. We can maybe as little as six weeks and we can be up to six months. It really just depends on the size of your piles, how you're managing it and what you are composting. Okay, so now what? Basically, now what is let your pile cure until it reaches ambient temperature. So that just means the temperature around. So the pile is going to be, when it starts to come down so you're not gonna see the temp spike. So maybe you see 120 instead of the 130. And then you're gonna see 100 degrees. So we want it to come down to the air temperature around us. That just lets all the microorganisms just take a break. It lets them chill out a little bit. If we were to spread that right away, they go and tie things up in the soil instead of giving it away. And so we don't want them to do that. A couple of things to keep in mind when we're spreading it. So we're gonna spread agronomic rates as a fertilizer or as a soil amendment. And so that basically just means that we're gonna spread only what the ground needs. We're not gonna spread more than what our soil or plants are gonna need. And because it's a stable source of nitrogen, we're only around 20% available for the nitrogen versus 50% that's in our fresh manner. And so a little bit of difference there. That's a little deep in the weeds and a very fast explanation. Again, if you go back to the videos in the 2020 composting online course, there's more explanation in there about availability and calibration and spreading and how that works. Okay, so manure contains valuable nutrients that plants need. If the nutrients are not used, they become a pollutant and are wasted. How do you manage your horse manure? Where will you store it? Where would you spread it? Will you compost it? So again, a lot of similar questions to what Carrie asked with the bedding of just let's think about our operations each individually and let's think about how we're going to manage that. Composting reduces weed seeds, pathogens, parasites, and volume and proper manure management can lead to reduced parasite load, which becomes very important. We have a parasite webinar which we have referenced a couple of times and we'll make sure and link that one again below. And then basically just use common sense when it comes to spreading to avoid odor issues if there are any odors or pollution issues. And then also, I know several people will ask what about spreading manure on my pastures? And so we're just gonna cover that real quick here before we end. I'm gonna leave, there's a few resources here. I'm just gonna leave those in here when I send the slides out. That way you guys have the most updated resources as far as manure management goes. Rachel, you can stop sharing and I'm just gonna keep talking for a minute. See what I'm doing on time. So when it comes to spreading your manure on pastures, we wanna make sure we really like spreading compost on pastures instead of manure. So fresh manure, we have not done anything to kill the weed seeds, to kill the pathogens, to kill the parasites. Those things we wanna make sure we're doing and the best way to do that is to compost it. And so another thing to keep in mind then is if we are gonna spread, we can spread our compost on our pastures. But if you can spread on your hayfield, that's even better. Because then you don't have to be concerned about your horses eating that product. That's a concern that some of you have shared with me. Something else is if you're gonna spread Rominer, let's put that out on our hayfield. Let's put that on the neighbor's crop field. Let's ask him if we can do that. That's ways that we can make sure that our horses don't necessarily come into direct contact with that product, but it's also going to something useful. And so with that, I will take any questions. Of course, if there's questions for Carrie, and I'm sure that Rachel mentioned this already, but if there are questions for Carrie that either Rachel or Paige can address, we're happy to send them on and get you an answer when I send out the link. So I did pop up there, just a poll to let us know how well we did here if it was useful to you. If you can answer that, that'd be great. Also, we do have in the chat box page, if you could pop that up there again, the demographic survey. If you haven't done it yet, please fill that one out. And if you guys have any questions, please unmute and ask them. Hope we do have one in the chat box. It says, our manure pile is not heating up to 130. What can we add to heat it up more? Okay, so let's talk a little bit. And if you want to unmute or if you just want to keep typing, so what is our moisture in that pile? What do we think it is? Can you hear me okay? I can, yep. Well, it's been, I'm in Wisconsin actually, North Central Wisconsin has been pretty dry this year, even or not, though it looks like rain is coming in now. So it has been a concern that the piles maybe just too dry, but does it need, we also have stables, we horses stabled. So they, we're using that in the compost pile. So there's a lot of manure and a lot of, we actually use the wood shavings. In the stables, so that's nice mixture of the manure and the wood shavings. But it seems like this hot, as I've been able to get it right now, it's like 125. And I thought- So you're right there. Yeah, we're getting there, right. Okay, and so that would be something, though one of the first things I would say is, especially if you have rain coming and you're like, well, it's gonna rain a measurable amount. We're looking at an inch or two. Let it rain on it. And you could even before it rains, you can make a bowl on the top if you want to. So kind of take whatever your turning tool is, if it's a payloader or a fork and just kind of make a bowl so it actually collects in there. So your pile will collect that water. And then after the rain event is gone and the ground has firmed up a little bit, go and turn it, get it turned in, and that'll help. And then wait about two or three days and you should see a spike. If it ends up not raining, you still can't get it to come up. I know it's not convenient, but moisture is so incredibly important in getting these rows to heat. And so if you could somehow add moisture to it, that would be best. Keep in mind, it is still composting. So it's still heating. You are still seeing a volume reduction. The good things are still happening. It's more so if you really want to make sure that you're killing weed seeds and parasites, we do need it to get up just a little warmer. Oh, sure. So moisture sounds like the real key right now. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for joining us from Wisconsin. Thank you everyone for joining us again. If you have suggestions, you can always send them my way. When I send out this final link, I'll ask for suggestions for anything in the fall or next spring. And then if there's anything we can send you this summer to help with management during of the summer, there's small things we can send you here and there. We're happy to do that. And just thank you guys so much for allowing us to join you again.