Where's all the manure?

zagmund

Does anyone know if it's still possible (or advisable for that matter) to get farmyard manure for adding to the soil these days?

Back in the day there used to be signs at farms around the place advertising it for sale, but I don't know when I last saw one recently. Being based in Dublin possibly doesn't help on this front, but even when down the country I haven't noticed them any more.

Given that there are still plenty of farm animals and they are still doing the basic biological functions, there must be a giant stash of the stuff somewhere.

I know you can get bags of it in garden centres, but my understanding of that is that it's the manure equivalent of easi-singles vs brie. It may have started out as more or less the same product, but then it's processed, homogenised, standardised, etc . . . so that you end up with something not quite the same.

So, does anyone know where (in the Dublin region, ideally) you can get manure for the garden?

z

St. Leibowitz

Stables. Any riding school will usually have various heaps at different stages of rotting which you can collect for free. Horse manure is very good for the garden. Kilronan stables in Swords would be one suggestion.

Lots of farms are now using slatted sheds with automated slurry collection, and very few are using cattle on straw bedding. Slurry is sucked out of holding tanks and spread directly on fields, so manure heaps on farms are a thing of the past, except on very small operations.