# Goat poop and pee for garden?



## mrstillery09 (Jul 12, 2012)

We are getting ready to scrape all the bedding in the goat barn out. I know goat poop is OK to go straight to the garden, but what about all the pee thats in the bedding? Will that hurt plants, or are we ok to use it? This is probably the weirdest question I've asked in a while!


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## saralee (Jan 5, 2012)

When we had goats and sheep, the litter scraped out was soaked hay or leaves with goose, duck, and chicken poop mixed in. Lovely stuff!. I was careful not to get let it touch plants--made a 1 to 2 inch layer on the two foot dividers between rows. Like a side dressing. Since there is so much going on in the spring, this stuff didn't get spread until after the spring rains, reducing danger of the litter burning the plants. Also dumped some into the flower beds as weed suppressor and mulch. Probably safest to compost it first, but I used it sparingly and had no problems. The dividers bewteen rows were first covered with 6 layers of newspaper or a similar layer of cardboard or paper feed sacks, and that kept down weeds from the hay bedding and also "ate" some of the excess nitrogen. The hard, yellow clay is now dark brown and friable.


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## Moboiku (Mar 7, 2014)

My barn bedding goes straight on the garden, poop, pee and all  The veggie garden flourishes.


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## geo in mi (Nov 14, 2008)

It kind of depends on how much manure and bedding you have, and what ways you have to carry it and spread it. The choice is yours, of course, and by being careful, as others have said, you might be able to spread it safely, and directly onto your garden. My choice, if there wasn't an overwhelming amount, would be to compost it. Here are some things to consider:

1) Nitrogen loss.... urine still in the liquid form will just evaporate and go up into the air as pure Nitrogen gas. If you spread urine soaked straw directly and flat onto your garden soil without covering it up or tilling it in immediately, it will lose at least a third to one half of the nitrogen in the first day...... I would make some kind of overall plan for manure handling into a compost pile with a covering to keep the rain from leaching the nitrogen downward once it has converted into the NH3 soluble form that your plants use. If you keep the straw piled up in a compost heap, you'll keep the urine absorbed in the bedding so it can convert.

2) Salt...raw urine will have lots of salt. Spreading it on top of plant root areas could possibly burn them. I would gradually uncover the pile after the composting is done, so the salt can at least leach downward.....The bottom layers, I would maybe spread onto row middles or as mulch for weed control.

3) Pathogens. Although it may be dry and easier to handle in the pellet form, a goat is still an animal with feces that can have the same pathogens as other animals. Here's a list....this shouldn't scare anyone, but it's just wise to recognize the potential.... http://www.ag.auburn.edu/~schmisp/safety/ohs-issues.htm The heat of a good composting system will be able to kill those pathogens and keep your food super safe.

I think every serious homesteader should consider a good manure handling plan that saves all the valuable nitrogen it can. Plus it's a great justification for buying a Kubota with a front end loader... 

geo


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## sammyd (Mar 11, 2007)

We put ours directly in the garden and tilled it in the same day. When we had lots of goats it was spread on a field and plowed in.
Sometimes we would pull the top dryer layer off and use it for mulch in the garden.


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