Recently I attended an informative day of talks, hosted by Bartlett Trees. One of the speakers discussed the issue of using horse manure in gardens. He had noticed a lot of plant death and decay at one of his sites, and discovered the gardeners had been composting horse manure from the barns, and adding this compost to the gardens. The horses being raised were very rare breeds, and injected with a lot of antibiotics. Antibiotics kill off bacteria, an essential component in healthy gardens.
Because horse manure seems a natural product, many gardeners assume it is organic. What they do not realize is how many chemicals are injected into the average horse.
In an organic food course, the instructor recommended going to horse stable neighbourhoods to scoop horse manure off the street for food beds. When I questioned the chemical possibilities in horse manure, another student googled my query and announced his findings: horses are only injected with antibiotics once a year, in the spring. The conclusion was, as long as we avoided getting horse manure within a few weeks of this injection period, the horse manure was organic.
At the time I took this course, I also worked on a horse farm. I noticed that all of the horse manure was loaded into a truck and driven off the property. I discussed horse manure chemical components with the owners of the horse farm. They did not want the horse manure in their gardens because their thoroughbred horses could be injected with antibiotics as often as every six weeks.
These are two examples relating specifically to thoroughbred horses. I do not know if regular horses receive the same kind of chemical care. My point is, do not assume horse manure is organic. Get horse manure from a reliable source. Ask the horses' owners, if you can, what goes into the horses, because that is what will come out of the horses.
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