hi peeps
been wondering about all this nutes stuff
and was wondering if i could use cow dung for growing in
not straight but mixed in with compost,

on the other hand what about chicken shit a pal of mine has some birds he keeps and iam sure the dung would be good for growing

any advice would be greatfull
wee-willy

Horse muck is one of the best fertilisers you can give a plant, try and get the stuff with the straw in too, plenty of nitrogen filled horse piss!

Cow muck isn't worth it. Cows have far to an efficient stomach setup, so theres not alot of good stuff left in the muck when it passed through.

Not sure on chicken muck, but i know it smells to high heaven, so i'd give that a wide berth for the sack of my nostril health.

Make sure its well rotted before use.
Also, you might want to sterilise it to remove unwanted hostiles.
Chicken shit use with great care, its extermely strong stuff. TBH you're better of buying the pellets of it, and use sparingly because it is a slow-release fert, and as such not really much cop indoors. Best use outdoors.

How do you intend on using it? Shop bought multi-purpose composts are good to go, and need no bulking up or bolstering, so any adding of shyte to them will just make your mix too strong and burn your plants.
Are you making a tea to use when nutes are eventually needed?

AFAIK you have to leave dung to breakdown and get rid of the ammonia etc.

e2a. what Arnold said.

e2a. outdoors after you crop you can spread a 6-8" layer of horse manure over your patch and let the worms work on it over winter.

edit again...worm shit is the best stuff for indoor compost.

Sorry mate, should have said the above also. whoops!

As said don't use horse muck fresh, it will burn your plants. As said leave it to breakdown, compost bin is ideal, let the insects get at it etc.... however as also mentioned after this, you'll need to treat the soil to remove nasty things that have got into it over the breakdown period.

You'll know when its ready to use because it will go this milk chocolate brown colour and will also and this is critical!!! it wont smell at all! thats when you know its ready, basically it wont be horse muck anymore, it'll literally be very good quality soil by then.


I'd mix with some general seedling compost, perlite and some sand.

cow manure is not a fertiliser, it has properties similar to rock dust

cow shit must be good for something, the farmers like to spread it over there fields.

Horse shit is great, I always mix in some of the well rotted stuff. Never used cow shit, but that is the stuff farmers use in their muck spreaders.

Tell that to my veg patch and i think it`ll heartily disagree

both horse and cow shite make good compost, but must be well composted first..... they should be allowed to reach high temperatures to get a pathogen kill, temps over 55/65 degrees are sufficient to achieve this.

most horse bedding has an awful lot of straw in it and is high in carbon and usually lacking in a good nitrogen source, so this needs to be amended by adding another source of n to encourage efficient composting, cow shit is good for this or use old silage


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nice info folks
but what i was thinking was going up the fields where i know of a big well rotted dung heep
i was there a few weeks ago digging brandling worms for some fishing i was doing, yes i got 2 rainbow for 4.5LB
also a few years ago digging up some mint growing on top of it so it has been there a few years, so must be well rotten i think?..
i am starting a indoor grow with compost in pots and thought this would be good nute's
also worms, is it worth digging up some worms to put in the pots, i was thinking of the brandlings from the dungheep

wee-willy