Fair price for horse manure?

[Badstripe]

hi just got an allotment a couple of weeks ago and have met the local shite merchant, he wants £1 a bag for his manure, is this fair? he started at 1.80 a bag,

How many bags do u think i will need? my allotment hasn't been dug for 4 years and was covered with brambles, soil is a 'little' clay like. I have a 3rd of a plot.

I'm in Bristol if you know anyone

thx

Neil

[Badstripe]

[saddad]

Welcome to the site Neil...
We get cow muck by the Tonne (£25) but Horse muck is better. You can't have too much of either... If all the beds, except the roots are more than 6" deep in it you could give it a miss for a year... but that isn't a bad price for "bagged" depending on the size of bag of course...  ;D

[manicscousers]

Hiya, neil, welcome to the mad house  ;D
we pay £40.00 for an 8 ton load but it comes in a trailer  :)

[lewic]

Hi Neil

I'm also in Bristol, Kersteman road site. Where are you?

Am a relative newbie to this, so also interested in finding a good source of poo! We have a compost man who delivers bags of combined mushroom compost/manure (dont know the ratio, the consistency varies a lot) for £1 a bag if you order in bulk. He started off charging £1.50 and we haggled! Have been told that it wont feed that plants as well as neat manure, but is good for improving the clay soil. Ordered 50 bags and have probably got through half this, reckon I would need another 50 to do the whole plot properly.

Paid £3 for neat manure delivered to site, this was in much larger bags though (ie too heavy for me to lift).

Where do you get yours from? There is no vehicle access to our site so I'm reliant on other people carrying it a long way up a steep slope!

[caroline7758]

A lot of people get it free round here, but it's along way to travel! ;D The chap on our site who had some contaminated stuff last year told me where he got some 5 yr old stuff today- think I'll be off up there next week. :D

[dgillings]

How do the rest of you allotmenteers get your manure delivered? I've not come across anybody local to me delivering or even selling manure in bags...

We just started an allotment association and are trying to work out the cheapest price per tonne at getting the manure down to our site - we'll then have to barrow it to our individual plots as there is no vehicle access...

Anyone out there local to Bracknell and know anything about this? I'd be interested to know how big these £1 bags are...

[Lauren S]

Please try your local FREECYCLE...I did and got a great response.

Just ask for some well rotted manure... you never know, you might be lucky  ;D

[asbean]

A couple of years ago the Young Farmers offered to deliver bags or trailer-loads.  We ordered about 15 bags, they phoned to find out where we were and they never turned up .Perhaps they are still looking.  :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\

[M.S.gardener]

go to you local stables and they'll beg you to take it off them,well thats what i do anyway!

[Vortex]

I get all mine for the cost of the diesel to go and get it. By association with a place in Kent I know in the local neighbor hood you can get cow muck delivered at £15 per trailer load - that's about 3 tonnes, and in the past my father-in-law has had horse manure delivered for between £10 and £25 per trailer, again about 3 tonnes per load.

As has been mentioned try freecycle, but also check the council website- some councils (Surrey definitely do) maintain a list of stables offering manure. In most cases, where stables offer manure you'll need to take your own bags and transport - a trailer is a good idea!

[Squash63]

We get as much horse manure as we need from local stables. It does have straw or stuff that looks like wood shavings in but we've been using it for a couple of years now and it's been fine.  They are only too happy to get rid of it and don't charge, not even for delivery. 
Some of our plotholders who have trailers go and fetch it themselves because then they can get the poo without any bedding, again no charge.
I think you will find that most stables give it away free but maybe we are lucky that we found one that delivers too. Maybe you could Google for it in your local area?

[staris]

we had a lot of problems trying to get manure unless you are just after a few bags of horse manure of the stables, most of the farmers around here are kepping the cow manure as the price of fertilizer is so expensive now.
we have managed to find a farm that only has beasts and we can get a 8ton load for £20 dlivered  :)

[jellied]

That does not sound to bad at a £1 bag. I get mine free from the local stables but ask yourself how much you would charge if you drove to the farm, shovelled piles of the stuff into bags and then drove it somewhere.

I think I'd probably charge around that myself!

[cornykev]

Again I get mine free from local stables, but I have to bag it my myself, I'm way tooo tight to pay, free is my favourite word.  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[simon404]

Personally I would only buy manure that is mixed with straw rather than sawdust or woodshavings, which take years to rot down enough for garden use.

Also remember the issue of manure being contaminated with aminopyralid (google it!) last year - many peoples crops were ruined. It's use is currently suspended for use by farmers but there may be unscrupulous merchants or farmers out there looking for ways to offload it onto unsuspecting gardeners.

[Weed-Digga]

The only fair price for horse manure is free!!

About 5 different people have paid the £10 deposit to have a key to our site just so they can get rid of it, when you think about it, people with more than a couple of horses must have great piles of the stuff that they would otherwise have to pay to dispose of, so have a ring 'round your local stables and you could (hopefully) save yourself a fortune :)

Weed-Digga