Something different!!

I have a field and it’s all mine, but sadly I have to share it with some horses along with random walkers who can walk along the public footpath. I like to woof at the randoms as if they’re trespassing but I don’t think they’re very scared of me.

This is me sitting on the bench that we put at the top of the field. It’s a bit scruffy but it’s a bench and we like benches a lot. I think there should be a lot more benches in the world, especially along the footpaths that we go on. We let the randoms sit on our bench as it’s almost at the top of the hill and a good spot to catch your breath.

The horses have a very nice view right over to Badbury Rings and we can even see Tarrant Rushton Airfield and lots of farther away places. I don’t think horses appreciate views much.

Hmm I thought there was a horse in this picture but it seems not.

There’s not even a horse in this one. But I’m in it and I’m far more important than the horses.  There’s also a barrow of regular horse poo – now, pay attention to what regular horse poo looks like, I’ll be asking you questions later.

And as we’re doing strange things, this is a whizzy new electric fence tester that mum won from Electric Fencing Direct She says it’s really good because it’s not got a wire and earth stick to put in the ground so is much smaller to carry in your pocket. It’s also better than the pocket tester that beeps when you get near an electric fence – that one also beeps sometimes for no apparent reason. If anyone from Electric Fencing Direct is reading this, thank you very much – we love it. It’s very satisfying seeing that there’s a good amount of electric going through the fences.

Anyway, Thursday 21st March was declared fluffy poo day. It was a little bit fluffy on Wednesday, but on Thursday they were pretty much all exploded and jam packed full of little beetles.

Underneath the poo we found big holes, well, big in comparison to the size of the beetles, maybe a tad under 2cm across. Do the beetles live in the holes?

This is the wheelbarrow full of all the exploded poo. It took up lots of room and had to be squished down a lot to fit it all in.

Here is a little video of a close up of the wheelbarrow contents that were actually moving.

When the wheelbarrow was emptied there were thousands of beetles left at the bottom. They have nice shiny backs but we haven’t identified which beetle they are as it seems there are lots of different types. You can look here if you want to.

Today when we went up to the field, this is the poo pile where the beetle infested poo was. It doesn’t normally look as smooth as this! Those beetles have been busy little bugs.

Here I am on the other side of the manure clamp, as you can see, it’s quite lumpy and looks much more normal.

I’d better not go without showing you who produces all that poo. Heavens, I wouldn’t want anyone thinking it was me. They eat and poo all day long… I’d be happy to eat all day long but I’d probably get a very round tummy.

Well, here endeth something different. We’d like to know what causes this phenomenon – we’ve seen it lots of times before but usually only a few exploded poo, not practically every single one. There are always beetles too, but never as many as there were on Thursday.

Is it like the flying ants that always seem to appear for just one day every year? Was it the weather? The moon? Answers on a postcard please or in the comments below.

And just for fun, here are some interesting facts.

A 1,000 pound horse will defecate approximately four to thirteen times each day and produce approximately nine tons of manure per year. The 1,000 pound horse will produce, on the average, 37 pounds of faeces and 2.4 gallons of urine daily, which totals about 50 pounds of raw waste per day in faeces and urine combined.

There are lots of different names for horse manure. Horse manure is sometimes called horse buns, road apples, horse pucky, horse chips, horse hooey, and horse apples.

Horse manure should be aged about six months before using on gardens. Manure tea made with fresh horse manure can be used to feed vegetable and flower gardens, or fresh manure can be used to build a “lasagna garden.” It doesn’t burn the plants, so even if you don’t let it compost for six months, you’re not going to kill your plants.