 So, like I said, today we're going to talk about horse manure management. And so, how it's going to work is I'm going to start. I'm going to talk a little bit about production and volume, why that's important to know. From there, we're going to roll into stacking areas and site selection. I'll talk a little bit about composting. Then Paige is going to take over and talk about manure weed management. And then Rachel will take over and talk about manure parasite management. And then I will end with, how do you work with a custom manure hauler? What is a custom manure hauler? And then some at-home spreading options. So that's the plan for today. We have a lot to roll through, but we will get it done. Okay, so just as a general idea of who is here and why we had you guys put your zip codes in so we can kind of map out where our folks are coming from. And so the majority are from North Dakota. So welcome. NDSU Extension is glad you're here. We do have some participants from other parts of the US though too. And then we did have some folks registered from Germany, Australia and Argentina. And then there was a couple postal codes that were different that we weren't sure where they were from. And so they either accidentally typed in wrong or Google just doesn't recognize that, but you're from somewhere. So if you want to put that in the chat pod, we'd be glad to look at that. So here's where everyone's from just so you have an idea. And more so this is for Rachel and Paige. So we have an idea of who is here today and maybe even you guys. So number of horses per participant. I had you guys put this in as well because I was curious who we're looking at. And so the numbers that are in the yellow, so here the numbers that are in the yellow are the number of people and our participants and the number of horses is along the bottom. And so you can see then that six people had zero horses. And so some of you wrote in the comments then on why that might be. And most often it was you ride horses for other people. You ride horses for a class you're taking. You're thinking of getting a horse or you're just interested. You work with people that have horses and you're just really interested to hear what we have to say today. But you can see though that the most common number here is two horses. So 24 of our participants have two horses. Three and five would be the next most common numbers for horses. So a lot of folks have less than 10 horses that are on here today. Okay, so now we're going to get into the the why of this. Why management or why is Mary so interested in this? Managing manure it contains a lot of valuable nutrients and so these plants plants can use these nutrients but if we give them too much or we give it to them at the wrong time we're wasting the nutrients but then also we're potentially causing pollution issues. So improper manure storage and land application which sometimes happens when we have livestock and we're not sure how much manure they produce or what we're going to do with that manure can cause excess soil nutrients. So that's basically repluting the soil with extra nutrients. That sometimes leaves the surface runoff which can lead to algal blooms like you see in the picture, leachate. So that's going down through the soil profile and then water contaminated with manure. And so those are reasons that I work with manure. Those are reasons that I want you to manage your manure. But also some things that you might consider maybe more important flies. So management considerations for manure for you might be something like flies, bacterium pathogens, rodents, weed seeds which we'll talk about, internal parasites which we'll talk about, and odors. And so why would odors be important? Your neighbor probably especially if you're in an urban area does not appreciate your manure pile and so how can we handle some of those issues? So we're going to talk about the majority of these today as we go through. And the first thing we're going to start out with is production. So I borrowed these numbers from Michigan State University's extension program. They actually had a webinar yesterday and so I'm going to post, if they recorded that, I'm going to post their link and so you can maybe their numbers are more appropriate for where you're at in the country. And so you can grab both of our webinars and use all of the information. So why do we care about production? Okay, well let's just walk through these first if you're thinking too much math for noon on a Wednesday. I agree. But manure produced per horse per month. So we have a thousand pound horse. They're going to make about 50 pounds of manure and you're in a day. So we take that by 30 days. We have about 1500 pounds of product and then if you're bedding with a shaving or you're doing shavings in your stall, so if you have a stalled horse, then you're going to have around 1950 pounds of total manure per horse per month. And so if you do the math on that, so 1900 is pretty close to 2000, which is a ton. So 2000 pounds equals one ton times 12 months is 24,000 pounds or 12 tons of manure per year. Sounds like a lot. Now we're going to look at volume. And you might be thinking, we just did all the math. Okay, and so there are different ways to look at it. There's tons and then there's volume and you can, I'm not going to go through these numbers here, but basically you can have, let's see, so if you have 2000 pounds of manure per horse per month, that can equal 99 total cubic feet per horse per month. And so these volume, both volume and pounds, that's going to come in important later as we're going through it. So I just wanted to give you some initial, what is our production and why is that important and you're going to see why that's important as we go through this presentation today. Okay, so first we need to talk about manure stacking or stockpiling. Depending on where you're at in the country, you will call it different things. You'll call it manure stacking or you'll call it manure stockpiling. Basically, it's the same thing. So short-term manure stockpiles and these guidelines are from North Dakota. Every state is different. And so I give North Dakota guidelines because that's where the majority of our participants are coming from today. However, if you do have some questions about this, you can easily just call your regulatory agency in your state and they should be able to tell you what the guidelines are. So a short-term manure stockpiles in North Dakota, manure may not be stockpiled for more than nine months at a time and the same location cannot be used from year to year. Versus a permanent manure stockpile in North Dakota, you can stack manure there for more than nine months at a time. And this typically involves some kind of soil investigation and regulatory oversight. So they want to make sure that you can use that pile or that ground every year. So that site will be your stockpiling area every single year. But they have to make sure first what kind of soil you have there, where that's going so that we're not leaching any nutrients into the soil. Okay, so how do we pick an area for stockpiling? And most of us are doing stockpiling on the short-term. So we're doing it like a nine month or less. And so no matter what, sandy soils have rapid permeability. And so what does that mean? It means that the water with nutrients that are dissolved in there can quickly go through the soil profile. So that's why we want to use more of a clay type soil. And in North Dakota, we have a lot of areas that have clay soils and so that's a benefit for us. So we want to make sure that we're using a clay soil and then depth to groundwater and location to surface water. So what is your groundwater table? And what is like, where are your streams and your rivers, your lakes? Where are those located relative to where you want to stockpile your manure? Okay, no matter if you're doing short-term or long-term, it does not matter. Miner stockpiles may not be located in gravel pits or other excavations. So if you see an area and you're like, well, I can't use that for anything else. Nobody uses it for anything else. I'll put my manure there. Don't do that because it's probably not being used for something for a reason. Very likely if it's a pit, it's going to become inundated with water. Especially after the fall we had last year here in North Dakota and pretty much throughout the country, a lot of rain. And then plenty snow this winter and some quick thawing this spring. We have a lot of water sitting around. And so a lot of those areas, those pits, holes are being filled in. We don't want to put manure along streams or lakes. Anything that's surface water or that's going to run to surface water. And then within 50 feet of a private well or 100 feet of a public well. And then some areas, so in North Dakota it's not required, but you can cover your manure with a plastic or a tarp if you want to. That can help to reduce the odors and the fly issues. But of course here with the wind that we've been experiencing today, I look at my window with my home office thinking, it's so beautiful out today because there's no wind. But the last couple of days it would have been kind of hard to keep that tarp down. And so in some states it is required that manure stockpiles are covered. So again, you just go to your state and figure out what those regulatory requirements are. Okay. So one way of managing these nutrients or managing these issues is composting. And I like to talk about composting. We could talk about it all day long. This could be a whole webinar just on composting, but we're not going to do that. So what's going to happen is I'm just going to glaze over composting real quick. And then if you have further questions on that, you can always ask me. And again, I'm going to post a couple of resources to go with this webinar. And one of them is going to be our composting publication that really spells out how to do these things. So the benefits of composting, why do I like it so much? Especially for a horse operation, horse manure comes out almost perfect. There's a lot of people, it's so easy to use. And so we want to compost that. Composting horse manure is easy. It's one of the easier products I think that we can compost. But why compost? We can get rid of our weed seeds. We can get rid of our pathogens. We can lower the nutrient loss and we can increase nutrient stability. So I was talking earlier with the algal bloom picture and how some of our nutrients can leach throughout the soil profile. We can reduce some of that by composting because it changes the form of nitrogen that's available or that's there. So it doesn't change the amount, it changes the form. And then of course, weed seeds and pathogens go down. That's always a benefit. There we go. Another thing that might be more intriguing to you is a reduction in flies or reduction in insects in general. So flies, I know is a big one for horse owners. And so flies breed when spring temperatures get above 65, which we just hit. I think we're just hitting this week. Western North Dakota probably hit it on like Monday. Yesterday here, not quite. But pretty soon we're going to have some flies. And so you can see here it says they lay their eggs on the top couple inches of moist manure and then they hatch in as little as seven days. And so with manure compost, because we're constantly turning it, we can constantly disrupt that flow. We can disrupt their life cycle and potentially lessen the amount of flies we have. So something else to keep in mind with composting. Okay, so composting. What is it? It's a mixture of organic residues. You pile them, you mix them, you moisten them, and they go through decomposition. So the result is going to be crumbly. You can see in the picture here, crumbly, low odor, stable, nutrient-rich amendment. So basically what that means is we have changed the form, like I said earlier, of the nitrogen that's there. You've lowered the odor, so there should be minimal odor. We've properly brought it up to 10, so we've killed the weed seeds and pathogens. And one of the bigger things for maybe you guys is we've reduced the volume. So we've reduced the volume that's there by about 50%. So that's a lot. 50% less product there. Okay, again, that'll come in important later. So here's some potential structures. Now keep in mind you don't need a structure to compost, but it is something that some people do ask about. So you can see here in the upper left, there's a palette structure. And that's something that's simple to put together. It takes some tea posts, some wire, and some pallets. And then you can see one that's more of an engineered type product. And so that would be something that has either a clay base or a concrete base, concrete pad, and something to compost up against. And then down in the lower left, there's more of a bin system. And so those are pretty common, especially at stables. And then over on the lower right is a kind of a homemade type bin system where this person made this little bin to make it work for them. Again, you don't need a structure to compost. You can just put your manure in a windrow or a pile and turn it. And that will suffice. But I know folks do like to see structure whenever we talk about compost. Another thought is potentially doing a community compost project. And so this is a picture of a, this was actually taken at a stable. And so this is a, basically it's a dumpster. It's a big dumpster with a greenhouse top on it. And then on the inside, you can see that there's an auger. And so this auger in here then goes back and forth. And it goes and mixes up and down as well. And so what was happening is they were putting the composter, the fresh manure on one side. And then after a certain amount of time, it goes through the process and comes out the other end of this dumpster as a completed product. And if you'll believe it, they were using this product as bedding reuse at this horse stable. So what they were doing is composting manure and then using that composted product as bedding reuse. And you might think, holy smokes for pathogens and potential issues. But they trusted the process enough. And they had done it enough and managed it properly to know they were killing pathogens that it wasn't a concern to them. So this is probably not something you do by yourself. Probably a little expensive, just if you own a couple of horses. But as a community, it might be something to look into. Okay, back to the basics of composting. So what do we need? We need carbon and nitrogen. Those are two of the very first things that we need to talk about carbon and nitrogen. Like I said earlier, horse manure comes out, it's almost right. So we want 40 to one. So 40 parts carbon, one part nitrogen is what we like. So 21 to 40 to one somewhere in there. So we have this horse manure product and we have some extra bedding mixed in with it typically. And so that's a carbon source. And so we have that all mixed in and ready. And then you can see in this top picture here how we have the, we just use windrows. So you can use a windrow or a pile. So you pile it. We want to pile it so that it can maintain a temperature so it can get up to 10. And so when we're piling it, we're looking at the moisture content of that product. So what is the moisture content of your current manure product? We want ours in a compost. If we want our compost to properly work, to be anywhere from 40 to 65% moisture. And so that means we like an average of 50%. So 50% is right in the middle. We can do the wet rag test or the squeeze test. And so that's what they're actually doing in this upper right picture is they're squeezing to see what that moisture is. And so what you do is you put on a glove, you stick your hand in, you pull out some manure, and you squeeze. If water comes running out of your glove, you have too much water. We're over 50% likely. If you let it go, it crumbles in your hand. Very likely you have less than 50%, but if it kind of stays together, there's a little bit of water on your glove after you drop the manure off. There's a little bit there, but it's not pooling, it's not running out. You're probably at 50% and that's good. So if you're under that, what can you do? You can add water. If you're over that, what can you do? We can add some more products, some more carbon source to that, as long as we're not going over the 40 to 1 so that we're wrecking our carbon to nitrogen ratio. Okay, temperature. Ideally we want 131 degrees for 15 days, but nobody works on ideals and so we like a range. So 130 to 160 degrees is where I like to keep our compost. We're killing stuff at that temp, but we're killing the bad stuff. If we go over 160 degrees, we're pretty much killing everything. And if we go under that, we're really not doing much of anything. It's still composting, but it's not killing stuff. It's just a very slow process. It's too cold. We float everything down. And so ideally we like it between the 130 and 160 range. And you can buy these thermometers online anywhere from 35 to $70 depending on what you're looking for. Okay, now I've been talking about mixing it. We have to mix it. And why do we do that? We mix it to make sure first we have a uniform product and so we want everything to be uniform and mixed together well, but then also as we're mixing it, we're oxygenating. And so I said 50% of that pore space should be water. Well, the other 50% then needs to be air. And so that means that our bacteria, our pathway, our microbes that are working in there, they really like to breathe. And so 50% of that pore space needs to be water, or needs to be air for them so they can breathe. So how do we mix it? So a payloader. That might be really big for your operation and it depends. Maybe you're one of them that has the 25 forces and you use a payloader, use a front-end loader to feed, use a skid steer. Those are things that are really easy for you to get. And that's okay. If you have them, use them. Maybe you have a Turner, like that's in this picture here. So this is a compost Turner. Very likely you don't. They're quite expensive, but it might be one of those community projects you could look at. Or your local soil conservation district or soil and water conservation district may have something like this. And so make sure that as you're looking around, looking for options, you check them out. But very likely most of us are going to be using either a skid steer or a pitchfork. And that works. That is totally fine. I don't want you to not compost because you don't have the biggest and best products. We don't need the biggest and best. We just need what you have on your farm. Okay. So mixing helps maintain the temperature. So we talked about the temp and where it needs to stay and the oxygen. And so we need to mix it to put some oxygen back in the pile. But then we also need to mix it to make sure that we're maintaining a temperature as it cools down. We're going to mix everything up again and we're going to displace the pieces. And we're going to change the surface area and we're going to bring that back together and then that's going to allow the temp to spike again. And so that's what we want is we want our temperature to go up. And the best way to do that is to make sure that if everything else is correct and we have not mixed the pile, that's probably going to be the best thing that we can do. Okay. When is it done? So we've turned the pile. We've tented. We know what the moisture is. We knew what the C to N going in was. Everything is great, but Mary, it will not come up to temp. Okay. Maybe it's done. And you're going to ask me, when is that? Well, that's going to depend on your operation and your management style. So some folks get really excited and they turn every time that thing goes over 160 degrees. They're watching it with their monitor. They're out there. And then I have some folks that put it on the calendar and every 10 to 14 days correlates to the temperature spikes that we should get. And so they're going by a calendar. So there's might be a little longer. There's might take a little longer. Also, if you're adding product constantly to that pile and turning it, you're never really going to be done until you stop adding product to that one specific pile or that one bin and start a new bin. If you're constantly adding something fresh and you're mixing it in with the old stuff, you potentially are just keeping that process going, which is fine. It's just going to take longer. So it just depends on your situation, what you're going for, and what your management style is. Okay. So now we've said it's come to temp. We've turned it. We've mixed it. We've done all the things right. And now it's no longer rising, and we think it's done. Okay. So now we let it set. We let it set. We let it cure. And basically what we're doing is we're letting those microbes that are really excited, they were really excited. They really like their job of breaking down that material. But they need to chill out a little bit. Okay. And so we just let them chill out in the pile. We let the pile cure. We let it reach ambient temperature. So that means like the air around us. And then we can use it. And we use it at agronomic rates. So nutrient considerations, we have a stable source. The only thing to keep in mind, and this is more so if folks are really using it as a fertilizer, and they're used to using a fertilizer, it's going to be a different. Availability is going to be different than it was in a freshmaner. And so compost in a, or nitrogen in a freshmaner, North Dakota is about 50% available. In our compost, it's about 20% available. Still a good product. Just a different product. Okay. So before I keep going, I'm going to stop there. I'm going to turn it over to Paige. Paige is going to talk to you about reducing weed problems. So Paige Brumman is our extension agent in Ward County. And I think I just stopped the screen share. So I will fix that one second. There we go. While you're doing that, Mary, there's a question in the Q&A. The dumpster structure, is that a DIY project? Or are there plans or contractors for that sort of project? I'm wondering if that's a question for the community. The community composting. Yeah. So my thoughts on that was that was actually in Washington where that happened, Washington State, where we saw that. And so there's actually a company that does that. And so I could look for that information if people are interested. And I can go ahead and get that information to them. Okay. With that, I'm going to let Paige take over and I mess her all up because I stopped the screen share. So let's see if I can just get her caught up here. Okay. So Paige Brumman, again, is from our Ward County Extension Office. She's one of our Extension agents and Ag and Natural Resources and really likes working with horses. So I asked her to come and talk about weed problems in manure. All right. Thanks, Mary. So we talked about how important temperature is. And weed seeds consumed by the horse will germinate and produce more weeds if not properly composted. I want you to look at this slide here and it kind of shows that if that temperature reaches 140 degrees in your compost pile, that most of our weeds are going to be killed in one to three hours. So something to keep in mind though is that the entire pile isn't going to be at the same temperature all at the same time. And that's where it goes back to properly composting and turning that pile so that the outside of the pile ends up inside, reaches the temperature and kills those weed seeds. So again, most of the weed seeds will be able to be killed if you reach the correct temperatures. Mary, I am not able to advance. Can you go ahead and do that? Oh, thank you. So even if you properly compost, you go and you spread that compost, there still may be a few weeds, seeds that escape that did not get killed even though the mass majority will. At that point, you have a few different options to control those weeds that did germinate. Mechanical option would be mowing. So go ahead and mow your pastures after you graze them preferably or should be before those weeds produce a seed head that will be viable to the next weed population. A cultural method to control weeds will be maintaining a thick, healthy, dense pasture so that the weeds are outcompeted by the desirable plants and that can be done through overseeding and proper grazing management. Horses are pretty tough on grasses and pastures. They really like to chew them down and then that provides a good opportunity for weeds to come in and grow. So managing those pastures to minimize the weeds competing with the grasses is another option. And then a third option is chemical control and then be using herbicides to control the weeds. So the first step is you need to know what weeds you have in order to select the proper herbicides. You're going to want to apply those at the correct time. It's not as effective to apply herbicides to mature tall three, four foot tall weeds. It's best to control them when they're just a few inches in height. And then you want to apply them at the correct rate as well. And these are things that are going to be on the label of your herbicide product. And always remember to follow that label. That label is the law. If you need assistance with identifying what weeds they are and selecting what herbicides will be able to effectively control them, you can certainly contact your county extension agent. If you're using herbicides to control weeds and horses are consuming the pasture or the hay on the fields that have been sprayed, you need to be aware that some of the herbicides out there have herbicide carryover and they remain effective and active even in that manure and that compost. So one option would be to spread that compost back onto the pastures or the hay fields to minimize killing any undesirable plants such as your vegetable garden or your shrubs or your trees. Be aware that this is an issue for some herbicides that you may apply. So for instance, these are some of the active ingredients that can be found in hay and grass clippings and these herbicides may be applied on pastures. So cloperylid, phyloxapir, picolam, and triflopyr are some of the active ingredients that do persist in compost and manure. And then I want to draw your attention to the North Dakota Weed Control Guide. This is a good resource for finding ways to control products that can be used to control certain weeds and rangeland. So that is a good resource for North Dakota people. And then here's kind of an at-home way to see if there's herbicide carryover in your compost or your manure because even if you didn't apply any herbicides on your pasture, if you're purchasing hay, you don't really know what's being used. So keep that in mind. But here's an at-home test. You can fill a few pots with some potting soil mixture and your compost mixture, about a two-to-one ratio of your manure compost and then a commercial potting mix. Go ahead and also have a control of just plain potting mix pots. Plant some peas or bean seeds in those pots. Water them until they grow and have their first three true leaves. And then at that time, you should be able to identify if they look normal and healthy, it's likely that you don't have a high concentration of persistent herbicides in that compost. If the leaves are cupped and curled and the plant doesn't look so healthy, it's possible that there is some persistent herbicides in there. Keep in mind that some of these can stick around for maybe 30 days, whereas some of these can stick around for years, three, four years. So keep that in mind. Also, the results for this at-home test are only going to be as good as your sample that you took. So if you just grab one or two handfuls from your compost pile, that might not be as ideal as going and taking four or five or six or 10 samples across your pile, mixing them in a bucket and trying to get a good representative sample. All right, I believe that is it for me. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce Rachel Wall. She is the McHenry County Extension Agent, and she's going to talk about how to manage parasites in your manure and compost. Okay, and Paige, can you give Rachel control? I just gave up control, so I think, Mary, now you're able to give her control of the screen. Okay, so what I'm going to be talking about today is some of the equine parasites that we see in our region, in North Dakota. So most common parasites are what I have listed here. And I realize as we go further south, there are more, and these are internal parasites and not necessarily external parasites as well. I know Mary had talked about flies and other issues like that. I do have bots on there, which comes from a fly, but these are kind of our most common internal parasites. And I think everybody kind of knows the symptoms, weight loss, condition, anemia, colic, poor, rough coat. So you're going to see a lot of that coming around if you have any issues with parasites. I actually don't have control yet. Oh, there it is. Can you never mind. All right, so I wanted to talk kind of some management practices to reduce internal parasites, talking about removing manure daily from the stalls run-ins and weekly from pastures and paddocks. Make sure those pastures and paddocks are well-drained and not overpopulated. Composting manure, rather than spreading it on those fields also gets rid of those parasite eggs and larvae. After a period of time, you make sure to get it hot enough. Use a feeder for hay and grain and avoid feeding on the ground. Also talking about implementing some fly control programs. I know a lot of people that have horses in the area and usually they do have a fly control program in effect, whether it be those fly bags or fly predators or regular use of of an insecticide on their horse. Keeping water trough and feed bins clean so that there's no way for them to reproduce via water. Routinely examining horses for telltale signs of infestation. You know that scrubby looking tail or even seeing botfly eggs on the legs. Poor thrifty coat. Establishing a parasite prevention and monitoring program with your veterinarian is the next step to really look forward to. They have gone from regular deworming cycles to testing the feces for parasites and then recommending recommending a parasite control program based off of what their parasite load is. So that's really nice because then you can you can really look at at getting your horse cleaned out. This will not get everything but it will definitely reduce the amount of parasites that you will see in your horses. This may include regular manure checks. So most of the time when we see transmission or when the horse gets a parasite it's called a fecal oral transmission. So they poop on the ground and they obviously eat from the ground so that either from poop or from soil they're going to pick it up and it'll go straight into their mouth and then right down into the digestive system. And then in the case of botflies it's a direct ingestion of the eggs off of the legs. So there's a couple of different different things going on here and there's there's also a couple other ways that transmission happens but with that parasite life cycle you're seeing that egg or larval stage the first one it's either in the soil or in the feces they pick it up through their mouth and the life cycle begins in the mouth goes down into the intestine and that's where where that egg or that larval starts to develop and that can last anywhere from six months to two years in your horse and that's why getting that deworming done with a power pack or whatever your your veterinarian recommends is important. So that larval stage starts there it gets to become an adult and then it expels eggs and it goes back back through the feces and back into the environment just like we talked about that's why this is important to to manage all of that to make sure that all of the eggs that are expelled or most of the eggs that are expelled are taken care of through proper management of that of that manure. A couple of resources that I went through American Veterinary Medical Association and then the American Association of Equine Practitioners is where I found a lot of really good information on this and then talking to your regular veterinarian about testing testing that feces. I know this time of year I usually do a what I call a teeth and sheath exam and they're there already so get a fecal sample because it's probably in the trailer before you even leave the yard. Awesome. All right. Thank you, Paige and Rachel. So I will take back over here and we'll talk just a little bit more about manure as far as disposal options go. And so off farm and their disposal I had said earlier about potentially working with a community project and that's on here again so it could be some kind of community compost project maybe working with your local soil conservation districts maybe you engage them a little bit and ask them hey you know how can we work together do you have a compost turner do you have a site that we could bring it all to and we could have a community compost composting area local vegetable growers and CSA so community supported ag programs they like horse manure as a fertilizer of course we're going to want to keep in mind what Paige talked about with potential herbicide carryover and how that might be an issue and so that's just something to be very upfront about if you are going to give this product to a local grower what you know what was your hay or your bedding sprayed with and what might be the potential risks there some landfills accept manure so that is another option and if you're looking for off farm manure disposal something I'm most familiar with is my work with our custom manure haulers in North Dakota and so there's a lot of states and several of you before I turn my chat pod off as you were coming on when I was looking at it several of the states that are on here do have custom manure hauler associations or groups that so you could access them through your extension agents or extension specialists extension service in your state and so here in North Dakota I work with a group mostly these are big haulers right so they work with our cattle guys cattle are the biggest livestock industry in North Dakota and so they're gonna have equipment that matches our meats those needs however in my meetings with them and our annual meeting we just talked a couple months ago excuse me about working with equine owners how can we work with horse folks that have manure and they want to get rid of it will they work with you so here's a few things to keep in mind okay how much manure do you have to spread and I ask you that and this is where our production numbers from way in the beginning come from why was Mary talking about tons and cubic feet and all those things because it's going to come in so important because when you call a manure hauler most of these guys are based in rural areas and so there especially if you're an urban horse owner they're going to have to come to you which is a little bit different than maybe what they're used to as far as working with other rural cattle folks and so how much manure do you have to spread they need to know that because of the size and type of equipment and the expense of that equipment that they're bringing going to bring to your operation they have to know how much do they need four trucks or one do they need a bobcat or a payloader like what kind of equipment are they needing so that is something so how much do you have to spread where are they spreading it so this is your responsibility as a horse owner and the owner then of that manure to figure out where these custom guys are going to go with this manure it is not their job so when you call them and say I have a load of manure to spread they're assuming that you have either the lamp spread it on or you have already talked to your local farmer rancher neighbors and they've said yep you can spread here no problem because it's not their job to go and look that information out for you so two things how much do you have to spread and where the heck are we going to put it okay so those are two things you're going to have to know right away the other thing is to keep in mind is can they get their manure equipment into your storage area and if they can't right now maybe that's something to keep in mind when you're picking a stacking area is what kind of equipment can get into this area how can I best place this so that it works for me bringing this manure out and storing it but also for somebody who's going to potentially be hauling it off and then can you pay them and I say can you pay them because first we pay our ferriers and we pay our vet supplies and so we we do have to pay these guys coming to do this work it's big equipment it's expensive to run and so I would say a minimum in North Dakota at least a minimum of $500 is something that you're easily going to be looking at and we have to keep in mind that they have employees to pay and so they do like to be paid at the end of the day when they're done with their job so what does their equipment look like okay so here's just some examples this picture was actually taken at the North American Miner Expo we're getting ready for a solid demonstrations but I wanted to put it up there because you can see a variety of spreaders you can see vertical spreaders you can see horizontal spreaders you can see big spreaders but almost all of these spreaders are pulled by a tractor so will that big tractor and that big spreader fit into your stacking area where you have that Miner currently or will they be able to get a a skid steer or a tractor most likely a lot of these guys are using payloaders will they be able to get that payloader in there to clean that Miner out these guys aren't bringing pitchforks to pitch the Miner for you that is your job to have that area stacked up and ready so they can come in scoop it out put it in the into the spreader and go so here's what some would look like mostly though in North Dakota this is what our trucks look like so we don't necessarily we do have some haulers that pull those tractors like you just saw but the majority of the guys here are actually going to have truck mounted spreaders so will these truck mounted spreaders and then here's a payloader and here's another payloader will those payloaders fit into the area where you're currently stacking that Miner and if not can you move it to a different location to make it accessible to them or can several of you stack in one certain area together can all of you as a community stack so when they come you guys can spread as a community instead and then I put this picture over here and I'm thinking that you guys are pretty good about making sure your horses aren't eating if you're putting out hay or you know some kind of bedding something like that they're they're not they don't have net wrappers or twine on them but if they do it's just something else to keep in mind that the haulers do charge for twine cutting because as you can see in the picture here they do get that twine wraps really nicely around the beaters so it almost never ends up in the field but it almost always ends of wrapped around the beaters and that messes with the efficiency of that piece of equipment and so they have to go through then at the end of every day and sometimes if it's a lot like this picture is here they actually have to go through every few loads and cut that twine off which takes a lot of time and some pretty good effort and so they do charge for that as well okay so those were all off-farm disposal options now at home spreading options you're thinking I don't want to pay someone to do it I want to spread it myself it seems interesting to me maybe I should do this okay so there are some at home spreading options as well most of these spreaders are going to be small they're pull type they're ground driven so they're just a small pull ground driven spreader most of the time they're pulled by a four-wheeler some kind of HB like maybe a side-by-side a lawn mower some I was looking last week and there were some people that said we just retrofit them and we use we use our horse our horse pulls the spreader and so here's some examples and of course we don't recommend any of these examples over any others these are just some ones that I did a quick internet search last week and and some options that came up so some things to keep in mind some words that really stood out to me as I was going through and doing my research last week how many head do you have how many horses do you have and how often are you planning on spreading that's going to help you determine what size of these at home spreaders you're gonna want do you have the ground to put it on do you have the ability to have that proper rotation to do that what's the capacity of your spreader so how many horses do you have again how often are you planning on spreading and so you're going to need to know that for capacity and when I say capacity for these smaller at home spreaders it can be either bushels or cubic feet but now we're talking about bushels too so we talked earlier about cubic feet and we talked about tons but I didn't say anything about bushels and so I do have a slide in here that that will talk just a little bit about that what kind of vehicle do you have to spread it with does it have a variable speed on it do you want that is that important to you spreading and shredding that was a that were a couple of words used in all of their marketing where what kind of spreading and shredding does it do and is that important and it's going to depend on the type of bedding that you're using okay so bushels per ton of an holy smoke so we talked about tons and we talked about cubic feet and then some people when they sell manure haulers or manure spreaders are selling them on a bushel basis so how many bushels of manure can they hold and so if you go through all of these calculations you can figure out that 26 bushels per ton of manure and so for every ton of manure you're going to have 26 bushels so again this is just important for when you're talking to either that custom hauler or you're talking to that sales rep when you're going to purchase one of these at home spreaders here's some options here this is what they look like you just need to know that so the black one is actually in cubic it's a volume so cubic feet whereas the other ones were marketed on a bushel basis so none is better than the other it's just important for you to know how to do that okay I'm going to wrap it up here pretty quick I'm just going to cruise through these ones so manure sampling information I think before you spread ever you should always sample your manure I think for me it's one of the most important things I can tell you so sample your manure these are some labs that we use here in North Dakota these labs are located elsewhere so there's some North Dakota Wisconsin and Minnesota on here you can use any lab that you would like to these are just the ones here locally that we use and then of course once you get that those results back so what's your nitrogen phosphorus potassium what are those results from your nutrient analysis that you did and those tests can cost anywhere from $40 to $100 just depending on what you're looking for then I want you to calibrate your spreader so you're going to go through how many tons of manure per acre is being applied so here I am back to talking about tons of manure per acre and we have a publication that I'll put up in the resources part with this webinar when I post it that I'll talk about it's actually this publication here winter spreader calibration and it has this this chart inside of it and so it'll talk and literally walk you through these are pictures directly from the publication that I'll walk you through how to calibrate your spreader now you might look at this and say that is a huge tractor and I'm going to be using an ATV that's okay it's the same concept doesn't matter if it's a you're going tons per acre you're going pounds it doesn't matter how big your units are we still want to calibrate no we're putting down okay and then one of the last things is just using manure so North Dakota there's no restrictions as far as when we can spread some states there's a you they cut off the time so like you can't spread from November to April in North Dakota we don't have that but we do of course we can spread on frozen ground but we want to make sure that the runoff is contained and it does not have the potential to runoff in the spring and then also we want to consider slopes with less than six percent vegetative cover stubble and less than eight inches of snow so that's if you're going to be spreading in the winter otherwise we just want to use common sense really we have we all have these handy little smartphones whoop you can't see it there we go we all have these handy little smartphones and they have weather apps on them and you can go almost to the minute in some of them for sure by the hour so you know if it's going to rain you know if there's a big event coming don't spread because you're potentially going to compromise our water quality issues and then that's where we run into issues okay manure contains valuable nutrients we talked about that a little bit earlier today how much manure are your horses producing per year and that's important to know if you're going to be working with a custom hauler it's important to know if you're going to buy something if you're going to be spreading yourself if you're looking for a stacking area so you need to know what you're producing how you plan a management and where will you store it or where will you spread it all things to keep in mind when you're either working with yourself on your nutrient management plan or you're working with a custom person coming in and doing that with you composting potentially can reduce the weed seeds the pathogens the total volume if you manage that properly with a temp and turning mechanical cultural and chemical are all control methods for managing weed seeds proper manure management can reduce parasite load and then of course just use common sense when we're spreading our manure okay with that I'm going to stop that's it that's all I have so I think we're going to open it up and see if we have any questions okay so I was going to go over the kind of Q&A what we've had already if any if everybody was paying attention to Mary that you may not have seen the Q&A so Laura said that she couldn't afford a new manure spreader do you have any suggestions as to where I can find a used spreader does the extension office have a buy sell trade website or is it good to look on Craigslist or Facebook and Paige had mentioned in North Dakota we use it we find used equipment commonly posted on Bisman online or you can look in the classified section of the ag papers such as ag week and the farm and ranch guide okay yes that's great and then Gretchen said the barn that she's at Pilesman earth throughout the pasture area in the winter and spreads it in the spring horses are not in the pasture 24 seven and they have free access to hay that they enjoy over grass which is rather sparse however she was curious if this is potentially not a good idea so page mentioned that ideally the stockpiled manure should be composted before spreading in the spring and then we have a couple of open questions yet Chris asks how much can we put down of the composted horse manure on gardens between trees et cetera so if if one of my extension agents is more comfortable answering this question I certainly welcome either Rachel or Paige to do that I of course coming from the manure side of things will tell you only put down what you need and what you need depends on what you're growing and the situation in your garden so Rachel did you have anything to follow up on yep yep um like Mary had said get your manure tested so that you know what's there and then make sure you don't overdo it a lot of the times trees don't necessarily need any extra nutrients unless they're struggling with something and then gardens absolutely you can put down composted manure in there but make sure it's not too much I know I think it was Mary actually had told me that you guys had used it on your gardens and you you were good for like 20 years because you had so much in there so you know you can use it and you can use it you don't need to use all of it is what I'm saying um you know get your get your composted manure tested to find out how much is there test your garden plots to see what's what you already have available and then put down for what you need ideally you'd want a soil sample and a manure sample and then we could calculate the correct rate to apply quickly before we go to the next question if you guys do have um if you see the pull up on your screen I just really appreciate if you'd answer that that one helps us know whether or not these are useful and if we should keep doing them so if you can just click and answer quick I'm going to turn this off in about five seconds and then and then we have some other ones that of course we think are more important than this question which is should we do another one of these and so as soon as you're done answering this one I'll bring the next one up and Rachel let's keep rolling through questions okay so Lori says do compost or compost turners come in small size and what is an idea of cost range you know I am most familiar with the bigger ones the the kinds that that we saw and those cost ranges are 30 to 70 grand so that's a lot and that's why I say like it's good for a community project now are there smaller ones I'm almost positive that somebody has marketed or engineered a smaller compost turner but at some point and I know this because I've actually I've seen a few smaller ones especially in barns so when they do like in barn composting most common and dairy industries they're a smaller unit they're hooked up behind a tractor so it's a little different set up and so there are some other options there so we would have to look at some of that but yeah mostly they're they're bigger and they the thing with compost turners is they require creeper gear so a very slow gear so that we don't burn out our clutch and that's the biggest deal is that we want to make sure it's not just the turner expenses the tractor expenses as well so I don't want to turn you off the composting I think it's an awesome process but we just have a lot of things to look at when we're doing that and I'd like to add that work with what you have and no Mary mentioned that earlier but a little bit of composting with a small skid steer or even by hand is is still doable so don't let the cost of the commercial great equipment turn you away and thinking you can't compost yes and Rachel I think you're muted sorry the next one is from Robin does straw bedding compost harder than shavings in the compost process I think it's going to depend on what you have available to you so if you're using a fork probably yes if you're you know just using a pitch fork you know something smaller depends on if you're getting that up to a heat so if you're really heating that product up well you have the correct ratios that we talked about earlier with carbon and nitrogen and moisture those things it might go away a little easier but so in those instances if you're using smaller equipment wood chips are going to be easier wood chips and horsemen are easy straw it takes a little bit straw goes away I think a little easier with a turner and you don't have to you don't have to spread composted manure you can spread raw manure too there's a lot of people that if you have an at-home system you're going to pitch your manure daily or weekly into that little unit and you're going to go spread it and that's okay you can spread raw manure and these units that I showed you are set up to do straw so they're not just for horse folks they're for you know if you have a smaller sheep operation or a smaller beef operation you can use those turners there as well and so straw is something that we can put through a spreader okay Robin says thank you the next one is from Judy we have a plastic covered pile for three years still okay to use I'd say it's still okay to use it's still a product still a good product it might be depending on the heat where you're located you may have sterilized a certain part of that like the top few inches of that product if it was covered you know with a black plastic and it's really warm outside and so if you're looking at it for you're thinking I'm going to get a ton of microbial activity in this product and I'm going to use it for that reason maybe not but nutrient-wise you're still good okay Laura has the next question she's wondering if the questions that we've asked here are going to be available to read through after all the presentations are done well that's a good question and I'm not sure because this is the first time we've used the actual webinar version of this and so we've used we've used Zoom before but this is a different platform inside Zoom so I think yes but we'll have to see okay the next one is from Jeff any cost studies on building a covered pavement set up for five horses boy I bet there are I would have to do a little bit of research on that one I'm thinking that that is something that we could probably easily get for you I think it would vary by region two and what materials you want to use so is it a concrete bunker is it just going to be on a hard clay pan it would vary but yeah we could find some resources okay and now the next one it's from Lori we have found have you found sorry that any chemical residue exists when you use commercial wood shavings or bedding I'm asking from the shaving side of things I can handle that one I I don't believe so from the shavings the concern would be any hay that you were feeding your horses and that was wasted and trampled into the manure and bedding that that hay would be the concern for residue and when you're purchasing hay you really don't know if it's been sprayed or not yes okay that was all for the Q&A right now if anybody does have a question yet please pop that into the Q&A box so we can address it and this is our last poll we didn't want to poll you to death then so we we thought these four were the most important questions that we could ask and so this is the last poll so if you haven't answered yet and want to do that we would appreciate it it looks like from the the results of the last poll that you guys would be interested in another one of these and grazing grazing management would be the next topic if there are any other topics that you're interested in please feel free to put those in the chat box we just threw a couple up there that were potential topics but we are open to others yes we did have an answered question in the chat pod or the Q&A earlier Laura said earlier in the presentation you mentioned to pick the pastures once a week is spreading the manure throughout the pasture a viable option we usually take a drag behind the four-wheeler and drag the pasture to even out the manure piles is that sufficient Paige answered that with ideally we would want to compost the manure to kill weeds seeds pathogens and stabilize any nutrients before dragging oh and we have one more in the Q&A Robin Barnes oh she said she likes all of the topics but it only lets you pick one I know I did that on purpose and so we talked about that too and I think Rachel and Paige were like are you sure only one and I'm like yes because I want to know what's next and then we'll do it again and then we'll ask that question again so yes we know that all of those are pretty important to you guys and I think we've got a couple in the chat pod that's it Courtney says she would love something on arena footing and management Kelly says horse owner barn owner Mindy on warming and vaccinations and I think we kind of were thinking about that in in the industry side of things the veterinary service and the and and the feed sales and then Jeff was wondering about building a sacrifice area or and cleaning that area yes and that is something that's pretty commonly done too I think in the the horse industry is sacrificing a piece of land as in we know that basically it's like a a manure stacking area but you don't stack your manure there you just know that those animals are going to be there there's going to be no grass growing hopefully no weeds either it's just going to be an area where the animal stands and it's black and so that would be in sacrifice area and then cleaning that out we would clean that manure out of there for all the issues we talked about today and then use a stacking area for that oh john john put a good one in the chat box that said i'm interested in how to judge hay quality oh that that might be another thing where testing is always good you can you can have your hay tested send it into the lab to find out the nutrient sample and then there's always places online that you can find the nutrients that your horse would need kind of as an example would be merc veterinary manual has a really good layout of age range of horses and type of horse and and all of that as well or talking to your local extension agent mud management and the red river valley is another topic okay so i am going to wrap this up because we're just a little bit over one and i want to make sure that everybody has time to go on to either their next meeting or their home schooling session or back to work or whatever we have going on in this crazy world so we just really appreciate everybody being here today if you do have follow-up questions if we said something today and you're just gonna need a a minute to think about it you can always mull that over and then send me an email so mary.kina ndsu.edu my email address is up on the screen and so send us an email and then i have the list of attendees for today and so i will send out once we have the the webinar posted i'll send out an email that has the link so the link that's here will be the same link that's in that email so that you can get that um if you do have any follow-up questions for either pager rachel let me know and i can always forward that to them so send it to me and i'll get it to them and with that i think we will end so thank you all so much for coming