If you live near to a farm or stables with any animals in residence like pigs, horses, cows, sheep and chickens you will have a fairly good idea what manure is. If you live near to a farm growing crops you will know what the addition of manure to the fields will do to benefit the food growing there. For the benefit of everyone else, manure is animal pooh and farms & stables have loads of it. The manure will be mixed with a fair amount of straw bedding and this combination is great for making manure compost. This form of compost is a great fertiliser and it's abundance on animal farms usually means it is in the right location for spreading onto arable land for crops, feeding the soil to grow our food in.

Manure is also great for your garden. In its raw state manure is very acidic so benefits from a manturation period. As the manure rots down the smell disappears and it begins to resemble soil. It is best applied in the autumn so that the nutrients have a chance to disperse over winter and the acidity to reduce. Well rotted manure has no unpleasant smell, most of the animals supplying it are herbivores so it will have been grass to start with.

If you want some then pop along to your nearest farm or stables, they usually have plenty to spare. If you can't access it this way try your local garden centre. They usually have bags of manure and chicken manure which is sold in buckets of pellets. These pellets can easily be spread around the garden or sprinkled into the bottom of a hole for new plants. Our preference was to get our own chickens. They "go" where they like and most of it is somewhere near the lawn or in the flower borders. They are not allowed direct access to the veg patch though as veg plants are very attractive to a hungry chicken. The waste we collect from the hen house is added to our compost heap and this is how the chickens feed our veg.

If you need any more information or have something to add please let me know.