manure. De wormer. E coli

[Deleted User]

I watch my allotment buddies bring barrow after barrow of fresh horse manure to lay on their sites and I am wondering what happens to the horse wormer. Horses are wormed often and with very powerful drugs. Most worms are in their gut and that is obviously where the worms will be killed and then pass out in horse poo

E coli too, it seems to be pretty prevalent in various manures (as well as several other nasties.) What happens to it?

I mostly use comfrey and hm compost and just a little dried and treated manure and my veg are thriving, so why put people at risk by using manure complete with nasties

lostinrates

kittie wrote: »

I watch my allotment buddies bring barrow after barrow of fresh horse manure to lay on their sites and I am wondering what happens to the horse wormer. Horses are wormed often and with very powerful drugs. Most worms are in their gut and that is obviously where the worms will be killed and then pass out in horse poo

E coli too, it seems to be pretty prevalent in various manures (as well as several other nasties.) What happens to it?

I mostly use comfrey and hm compost and just a little dried and treated manure and my veg are thriving, so why put people at risk by using manure complete with nasties

not all horses are chemically wormed. fwiw, its it increasingly common to use faecal egg counts and worm with the right drug only as needed, with one worming for the worms you can't egg count for once a year. We're looking into this a lot atm because we're considering going officially organic through the soil association. What we do when we worm is stack that poop elsewhere and use it for something specific (in our case for hedges or to not worried about organic parents). soil association sounded far less worried about wormer and medicated poo than I have been while not organic!

A lot of people also worm with vermex now, as opposed to with ''traditional drugs''.

emiff6

It's many years since I kept horses, but I remember one time when I wondered why the droppings were staying so long in situ in one big field, and it turned out that the particular wormer we had used was killing all the dung beetles that usually did such a great job of moving the droppings underground for us.

We switched wormers and cleared the field of all droppings, and the problem disappeared. I believe nowadays, (though someone may correct me on this), that extensive trials have to be carried out to determine how safe any residues may be to the environment and fauna and flora that could be at risk.

As for E coli, there are myriad strains and variations, and almost all warm-blooded animals have some in their gut, including us. Most are harmless, some are beneficial, and only a very few will cause severe illness.

Unless you "Colditz" your lottie patch, you're bound to get bird droppings, maybe mouse and rat droppings, the occasional cat or fox leaving deposits etc, so why worry about neighbours using horse/cow manure?

[Deleted User]

I don`t have any worries emiff. I am/was interested

emiff6

Oh, right. Apologies.

cootambear

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3260488

greenmoneysaver_2

The question is actually - how does e.coli get into the food chain?

It lives happily in mammalian gi tracts and is passed out in faeces in small quantitis. If basc hygiene is met it won't transfer from hands to food.

However in animal slaughtering, if done badly e.coli is mixed with the meat and f not cooked properly can be active and cause issues.

Therefore as veggies horses are unlikely to have it, and worms won't get rid of it either!

I fear the cucmbers in question have probably been watered with sewage contaminated grey water, as is common in Spain!

cootambear

As the old saying goes, don`t !!!!!! in your own rice bowl

valk_scot

Anyway it's not best practice to use fresh manure on plants as it can scorch seedlings and stems as it breaks down. Much better to stack any manure you get now and let it rot down then spread it as a mulch in late autumn on your raised beds and cover it up with some black membrane or similar. By spring the worms will have worked it all in and the E.coli burden won't be any greater than any other soil around. Remember all soil is contaminated with faecal matter to a greater or lesser degree...mice, voles, rats, pigeons, foxes etc etc etc. But as has been said few of the strains are harmful and you should be washing your veg anyway tbh. And your hands!

sofaman

Check the FSA page on manure guidance, and using manure when growing crops.