Get the Scoop on our Poop
/If there is one thing we’re NEVER short of at HEEFS, it’s poop! Just from our pigs, horse, donkey, goats, sheep, cows and rabbits, our residents generate an enormous pile of poop – almost 200,000 pounds or 90,000 kg per year! And that doesn’t even include our 25 bird residents! That’s equivalent to 33 full-size pick-up trucks! What do we do with all this poop? We’re glad you asked.
Everything you’ve always wanted to know about poop
The poop of our residents can reveal a lot about their general health and wellbeing. Each type of resident’s poop will vary in composition and consistency. For example, cow patties tend to be flat and round while pig poop tends to be in large balls or even in spiral patterns. And we all know that rabbits have dainty pellet-sized poops – but up to 300 of them a day! Bird poop is unique in that it contains urates which means that birds poop and pee at the same time!
Every spring we check our residents’ poop for parasites and, depending on the species, they may be retested at regular intervals throughout the year. Residents are also checked if any health concerns are suspected. While we still do some of our poop testing off-site through our vet, we now have a microscope on site. No longer do we have to wait a few days to a week for lab results to return, saving us money and making routine poop testing fast and easy.
How seriously do we take the poop of our residents? One night when it was suspected that Nancy was ill, he pooped in the barn and our Supervisor, Animal Care, Andrea, got some bricks and yellow “caution” tape to protect the precious sample until someone could come and collect it!
Poop Patrol
We always say that we have the best volunteers in the world, and this is particularly true for our Poop Patrol team! Every single day we have a team of volunteers who head out to the field, shovels in hand and buckets at the ready, to clear our fields and pastures of poop. This helps keep the field clean and parasite-free. It also reduces the fly population, which can have negative health affects for our residents.
Composting
After our Poop Patrol gathers up the poop, it is deposited in our compost pile. This pile is in a low area far away from natural water sources, such as the creek that runs through our property, so there is no/minimal runoff.
At any given time, we’ll have several compost piles at various stages of decomposition. It can take up to two years for a pile to fully compost depending on how often we turn the pile. We always have an existing pile of fully broken-down compost from previous years that we mix in with the newer compost to encourage decomposition.
Once fully broken down, our compost is spread as fertilizer onto the pastures using our new manure spreader. We do this 2-3x per year to add nutrients back to the soil. This helps our pastures grow fresh greenery for our residents to enjoy!
