I always use the manure from our sheep shed, mixed with straw. Give it time to rot down and the roses, veg and other plants love it and the soil is much better where it has been used
Too much shavings in the mix means someone isn't very good at mucking out @Pete.8 Thistles don't tend to get eaten @arossrob - they seed in to a midden from elsewhere. If stock is eating thistles, they're something very wrong with the management of the ground. Anything well rotted will help, but I'd never use cow dung. Always horse/pony. Cows are fed too much rubbish in my experience, and have a different digestive system from horses and ponies, so I'd prefer to avoid it. Probably being overly cautious though
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Both are good. Both would also generally contain plant material, straw with cow manure and shavings with horse so both will contain plenty of plant material and be excellent as a soil improver. The old wisdom is that horse manure is 'warmer' which I think is drier so better in that sense, particularly if you've got clay soil. Both are high in nitrogen and I really don't understand the comment above that says horse contains more. It depends on how well rotted they are. For years I had access to cow manure from straw bedded cattle in winter. Great stuff and I used it however it came; fresh, rotted or well rotted. They all had their places. Be very careful with fresh manure of any type though.
Based in Sussex, I garden to encourage as many birds to my garden as possible.
My experiences from the allotment were that cow manure arrived wetter and smelled much more of ammonia sulphur type smells. The horse manure tended to be a bit drier and seemed a bit less active, but once it was wetted and left to rot down they were both really good. I always stacked mine as it kept the heat going for longer, every week or so I would turn it, this helped it break down faster.
What a lovely decision to have. Both are largely straw , perhaps wood shavings; that's fine. But if you don't know what humus is, how do you know you have it?
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
My Spanish mare loved eating thistle flowers @Fairygirl, even when they were seedhead fluff but the other 3 horses didn't. My manure from my horses was full of seeds that they ate. My meadow was full of wildflowers. My flowers grew like mad but so did the weeds in my flowerbeds! Same problem as @arossrob.
Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
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Funnily enough I’ve used alpaca manure as a fertiliser a few times, it’s quite good! Great for veggies 😂
Thistles don't tend to get eaten @arossrob - they seed in to a midden from elsewhere. If stock is eating thistles, they're something very wrong with the management of the ground.
Anything well rotted will help, but I'd never use cow dung. Always horse/pony. Cows are fed too much rubbish in my experience, and have a different digestive system from horses and ponies, so I'd prefer to avoid it. Probably being overly cautious though
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."