101 Secrets: Manure Matters

How to keep manure sweet and neat
Author: Village Farm Alpacas
Terry and Bonnie Callery

Alpacas are hardwired to go in one communal dung pile-- which makes scooping up after them really easy. It is a genetic adaptation that helps to reduce parasites in the herd, as well as making for move available grazing. One large pile will compost and heat up, killing parasites - leaving the rest of the field free of waste.

Regardless of how hard you try, your alpacas will sooner or later start a dung pile inside the barn or shelter when the rain or snow keeps them from venturing out to the designated spot. We didn't realize it when we built our small barn with a breezeway attached to the side, that this would be the perfect place for their "indoor latrine". When our alpacas starting pooping inside the barn during a snowstorm, we moved the pile just outside under the cover of the breezeway.

We use a large-wheeled big rubberized cart, which we got at Home Depot, that can hold about three times what a wheel barrel could for the daily dung removal chores. We have a compost pile located outside the fence, slightly down hill from the barn. We try to pile up each cartload, flipping it up and on top of the pile, so it naturally composes down. We sometimes use a pair of boards as a ramp for the cart, which helps to get it up on top of the compost heap. The composted manure that is a year old...is used to fertilize a pasture that is also seeded and then rotated out of use for four weeks.

Having the poop pile in the breezeway keeps the odor down in the barn. We also dress the area with a mixture of three parts lime to one part "Sweet PDZ" which is a horse stall freshener. That works great on the odor, which comes more from the urine than the dung. We get sawdust from the sawmill down the road ($15 for a truck load of full contractor bags) and we broadcast a shovel full after the daily clean up. We keep the sawdust in plastic garbage buckets. During the winter, dung piles freeze to the ground, however the combination of the sawdust and the covered area of the breezeway help to keep the dung from freezing into the ground.

Incidentally...I have the biggest and best garlic beds in Maine! The composted alpaca manure also gets used up in them as well as my vegetable gardens.

Terry and Bonnie Callery
Village Farm Alpacas

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