Just what the title says. Can i use goat poo for my plants? Top dressing? Mixing it in? Teas? Any info welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Goat manure is a very good choice for soil amendments, it is not as hot as the higher N levels found in horse, cow and poultry manures. Manure is best used after composting, rather than using fresh to avoid problems. Do not use fresh manure to topdress without composting. The compost can be incorporated into the original soil mix, topdressed, or used as a tea. I will post a pic below of plants that were grown with only composted horse and goat manures, a handful of fertilizer meal mix and one application of manure tea at the start of flowering. The compost and fert mix was added to the planting hole in March and the plant transplanted into the soil in June. The plants grew to 8' X 9' by harvest time and produced a main stalk larger than a liter bottle. http://goatconnection.com/articles/publish/article_84.shtml http://www.plantea.com/manure.htm [ PW
can you explain how i should compost it? I was thinking about starting a vermicomposting bin but having a problem sourcing good worms locally.
Depends on how aged the manure is. I treat manure aged longer than 6 months more as a carbon component (brown) than nitrogen input (green). If it's fresh I would go by the chart in this .pdf below, which states the goat manure they tested to be at 9:1, roughly as high in nitrogen as chicken manure. View attachment COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF ANIMAL MANURES ON SOIL.pdf "The total nitrogen (TN) contents of fresh (goat manure) GM (1.01%) and chicken manure (1.03%) are significantly higher than those of dairy manure (0.35%) and swine manure (0.24%)" The excerpt above is from this link here, so I would use this nifty compost calculator below to figure out how much carbon to add to get to the ideal C:N ratio. http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwaste/fileshtml/organics/compostCalc.htm Using that, I would select poultry manure and enter how many cubic feet (1 c.f. = 7.5 gallons) or pounds worth of material to be composted, then play with the amount of carbon input until you find an ideal ratio. Or you could do it the simple way, 2 parts green to 1 part brown. Here's a couple of great links on learning how to compost. http://www.compostjunkie.com/how-to-compost.html http://www.homecompostingmadeeasy.com/carbonnitrogenratio.html http://www.compostjunkie.com/compost-ingredients.html
I asked this mainly becuase my neighbor has like 18 goats next door so i wanted to know if its a good source of nutrients for my garden and to what extent. Also should i replace anything with the goat manure fresh or otherwise from my soil mixture or just throw it on in/ top dress?
Mix the goat manure into leaves and make thermophilic compost with it, then allow it to "cure" for a bit after it's cooled (mesophilic stage). It takes time and a little bit of effort but it is extremely worthwhile to do so. You could then use that finished compost in soil mixes or in a worm bin to further process it. Compost has a myriad of benefits over raw organic material like fresh manure, not to mention you shouldn't be applying fresh manure to soil that bears consumable items (food, herbs, etc) without a period of composting to ensure pathogen reduction and/or removal.