My friend just called with a question I never considered regarding some “beautiful hay” she was thinking of buying. She and I wonder if it is toxic or harmful in any way to feed horses hay that had been fertilized with pig fertilizer. Anyone got an answer or a clue??
What is pig fertilizer? Do you mean pig manure?
If so, exactly what problems does your friend expect?
https://modernfarmer.com/2015/05/get-a-load-of-our-manure-guide/
1 Like
I’d want to do a more thorough investigation to see if there’s a down side to this.
Around here many chicken farmers sell poultry manure to fertilize pastures and the locals push it for improving pastures.
But when I looked into it several years back I decided I didn’t want to use it no matter how cheap it was.
I felt it was safer to use traditional clean bagged granules not some farmer’s waste products.
I would assume the pig waste was spread on the field long before the field was harvested (since the whole point of fertilizing is to make it grow better). So I can not see why pig manure would be an issue.
I spread horse manure on my hay field.
I farmed for several years; an operation on a medium to large scale for sustainable farming. Chicken litter is about the best fertilizer around. My meat chickens had mobile coops with electric fencing that allowed for us to rotate about 1/2 acre at a time. The grass came up greener than Astroturf anywhere the chooks rotated through. A friend who was an area pioneer in sustainable farming techniques used to compost the offal from the poultry they processed on the farm into blood meal and spread it in the fields as well. His hay fields were the envy of the county. I didn’t have the conditions to get my compost piles burning that hot or I would’ve done it, too.
Granted, most poultry litter is coming from factory farm chicken houses. Most pig manure would be produced in a similar fashion as cattle manure - collected into large manure lagoons and then sprayed onto fields in liquid form. It’s typically going onto the fields prior to the growing season, and sometimes even in the late fall prior so that the frozen ground can hold it in place and prevent run off. I would be a lot more concerned about whether or not they’re spraying for weeds than what fertilizer they use.
It’s all a trade off. Commercial granuales cause environmental issues from the mining and transport of the compounds used in them. Obviously, some safeguards were put in place after Timothy McVey and the Oklahoma City bombing to keep large quantities out of the hands of lunatics. But fertilizer plants themselves remain inherently dangerous environments for the workers and surrounding communities. Commercial scale poultry and hog farms often contaminate their ground water and treat their animals poorly. I don’t see organic fertilizer as any less “clean” than commercial inorganic.
On a slight tangent, hogs treated humanely and allowed to live in their natural habitats are the coolest, most helpful critters imaginable. They’re smarter than dogs, excellent guards against predators, and are better than any machine for improving land. Ours roamed several acres of pasture and woods fenced with hot wire. In the summer, a 500 lbs hog only ate a few pounds of non-gmo mixed feed for vital minerals. The rest of their diet they foraged for, along with all the extra eggs and garden veggies. The worse the quality of vegetation the more they root down. They will clear out junk trees and underbrush and leave everything in great shape.
4 Likes
I think the only problems with manure of any kind would be if it was sprayed too late in the growing cycle. Composted manure is not going to be a problem.
That said, someone who knew a bit about hay said that a particular batch of purchased hay once gave the horses diarrhea because it was fertilized with chicken manure and therefore too high in nitrates
However lots of things about hay can cause diarrhea including sugar levels, fiber levels, and grass types, or just changing hay supplies too abruptly.
But even that doesnt really count as “toxic hay.”
OK I just went and answered my own question.
Nitrate poisoning in cows and to a lesser extent horses is a real thing but it is not going to present as just a bout of persistent diarrhea. Grass hay doesn’t seem to be a big nitrate accumulator. Plants hold more nitrate in drought or stress. In other words it’s unlikely that a nice batch of grass hay could have toxic levels of nitrates.
https://ker.com/equinews/nitrate-nit…xicity-horses/
On the other hand, if a batch of hay gave multiple horses diarrhea I sure wouldn’t get that hay again, no matter what the underlying problem! Maybe it was relatively high in nitrates, or sugar, or something else.
We have pig nursery barns. Our pig waste is flushed out to a lagoon and the water is recycled by a pump in the lagoon to flush again. We have to pump out the lagoon twice a year to keep it at an acceptable level.
We have applied that to our hay fields in the past with no issues. If they are using manure from pigs that is scraped up from a dry lot there should be no issues. When up North we had turkey manure applied to our hay field one year .
Manure is manure. Cow, horse, pig, goat, chicken or sheep we have used it all.
I would caution anyone applying anything but chemical fertilizer to do it in the fall after hay is cut for the last time. Applying any real manure or composted manure can leave a smell / taint that may not be gone by the time it is cut again.
The only downside I can see is if the pigs were being routinely fed medications as part of their ration (a la feed through dewormers). It would be nice to know what meds and what kind of withdrawal might be needed and if storage time changed anything.
G.
Farmers have spread manure on their hay fields year after year,winter after winter… It solved two problems at once. Fertilizing the fields, and disposing of manure.
Here in the NE many farmer have ceased to make milk, as manufactured fertilizer is expensive, their hay is of decreasing quality, without manure to make it grow properly and without the wherewith all to pay for fertilizer.
So pig and chicken manure is the least of your problems.
