Manure facts for kids

Animal manure is often a mixture of animal's feces and bedding straw.

Manure is a natural material that helps plants grow. It's often made from animal poop and old straw. Farmers use manure as a fertilizer to make their soil healthier. It adds important things like nitrogen and other good stuff that plants need. Tiny living things like bacteria and fungi in the soil use these nutrients, which then helps the plants.

The word "manure" comes from an old French word meaning "hand work." This is because putting manure on fields used to be done by hand.

What Are the Types of Manure?

There are two main kinds of manure used to help soil: green manures and animal manures. Compost is similar but different. Compost is made from organic materials that have already broken down. Manure is usually fresh or only partly broken down.

Animal Manure

Most animal manure is made of animal droppings, also called feces. These usually come from plant-eating animals like cows or horses. It also includes plant material, like straw, that was used as bedding for the animals. This bedding gets mixed with their poop and urine.

Green Manure

Green manures are special crops that farmers grow just to mix back into the soil. When these crops are plowed into the ground, they add nutrients and organic material. This makes the soil much more fertile and ready for new plants.

Manure on a wall

How Is Manure Used?

Manure has been used for hundreds of years to help plants grow. It is full of nitrogen and other nutrients that plants need to be strong and healthy.

Manure as Fertilizer

Farmers spread manure on their fields to fertilize the soil. Liquid manure from pig farms is often injected directly into the ground. This helps to reduce strong smells. Manure from cows and pigs is spread using special machines called manure spreaders.

Animal manure usually doesn't smell too bad. For example, elephant poop hardly smells at all! However, when a lot of manure is used on fields, the smell can be noticeable in farming areas. Fresh chicken poop can be bad for plants, but after it sits for a while and breaks down, it becomes a great fertilizer.

Manure as Fuel

Dung cakes being prepared for fuel in Brittany, c. 1900

Dried animal manure, often called dung, has been used as fuel for a very long time. In countries like India, dried cow dung is still an important fuel source. In deserts, where there are no trees, camel dung can be used for fires. Early settlers in America used dried "buffalo chips" (buffalo dung) for cooking and warmth when they couldn't find firewood.

Manure for Paper

Another interesting use for manure is making paper! This is done with dung from elephants, horses, llamas, and kangaroos. Elephants, horses, and kangaroos are not ruminants (animals that chew their cud). This means they don't fully digest plant fibers, so their poop still has lots of plant material. This makes it good for paper.

Related pages

• Biomass

Images for kids

• 

  Concrete reservoirs, one new, and one containing cow manure mixed with water. This is common in rural Hainan Province, China.

• 

  Compost containing turkey manure and wood chips from bedding material is dried and then applied to pastures for fertilizer.

• 

  The women of a neighborhood ward with manure on their way to the field of one of them, Tireli, Mali 1990

See also

In Spanish: Estiércol para niños