I want a manure fork for picking manure piles from my Coastal Bermuda pastures. If you have not seen Coastal Bermuda, it spreads by growth of stolons in a mesh along the ground. Standard manure forks, even the metal tine variety for stall use are are just too flimsy to fight the grass runners. A standard pitchfork has tines strong enough, but the tines are too far apart and the handle to head angle is just too flat.
So I am hoping that out there somewhere is someone who knows of a better tool.
I have no good fork ideas.
I am not sure what the weed is that make my life miserable at times, but I totally get the struggle.
I have been known to use a small rake and a shovel in these situations.
Rake the manure into the shovel to pick it up.
I’m not sure anything is going to work well. Even if you have close-spaced strong metal tines, you’re going to still get them under the runners, and even if the tines are strong enough to break the runner that’s going to mean the manure goes flying anyway. I just tease the pile off the ground as best I can and am ok with some of it closest to the ground not making it out. I don’t try to get the whole pile at once, I get a small front section and then the next front section and so on. That way not much of the tines have gotten under any runner.
There are pitchforks that have many tines like a stall fork. Not sure what they’re called, but they exist and they aren’t desperately rare. Although you might be better rolling it onto a big scoop shovel with your foot or a flat edge shovel instead of forking it.
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/groundwork-pro-10-tine-pitch-fork something like this maybe?
The trick with the fine-tined metal fork is to ever-so-slightly change your angle when scooping under the poop pile. Push the handle down just a tiny bit so that the very end of the tines aren’t digging into the ground but are slightly elevated and the point of contact with the ground is slightly further back along the curve of the tine. Still picks up the poop just fine but prevents the points of the tines from getting stuck in the grass.
If you didn’t mind raking it into a pile first, this rake might help. It is a dethatching rake and works miracles with a light, springy tug through thick grass and it pulls out all the thatch and debris that settles into the grass.
It pulls thatch that you didn’t know you had, and leaves the grass aerated and looking good. I never thought of it as a manure rake, but it could definitely pull stuff out of bermuda.
I ran into the same problem trying to clean up a gate area that had Bermuda grass growing in and under the poop. The plastic fork kept snagging on the grass when I got a good pile on the fork. I mostly had to rake the poop onto an area with no grass and pick it up. I think a fork with metal tines would do better than plastic tines because the tines would be less likely to break. But still both forks would get caught in the grass.
Thatch is a whole different beast from creeping Bermudagrasses. Runners can be quite long, rooting anywhere along the way it contacts soil even remotely.
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