Did you turn it since building it? Were there any other ingredients than manure and leaves?

I added 7 18gal bins of hm to my already cooking compost pile this spring and it really got cooking. It was already composed of 100's of ingredients from kitchen scraps and garden clean up.

I'd say stir it up and add some UCG's and bug juice + as many kitchen scraps as you can.

IIRC from my yoot, fresh bovine manure is very moist, ergo I'm gonna guess the pile is A) too moist; B) deficient in carbon materials; and C) not mixed thoroughly enough.

But I could be out to lunch, I've never composted manure of any kind.

Lloyd

fairly fresh steer manure, and mixed it with dry leaves

In my experience, best bet is not enough carbons. Could you take a guess on the ratio of the two things? Shoot for 2x as much leaves and other carbons as there is manure to kick start it.

Dave

Okay. That last one rings a bell. It's probably half and half, or slightly less leaves. I will add more carbon and see what happens.

-L

If it still smells fresh, that says anaerobic, maybe too wet but definitely not enough oxygen. Folding in some leaves will help aerate it and kill two birds with one stone.

If it still smells like anything, then you did not use enough leaves to cover it.

My guess is it dried out.

I agree with dchall_san_antonio to an extent - not enough moisture. I have composted horse, cow, and camel manure, as well as mushroom bedding. The most difficult to compost was the camel. I never added additional carbonaceous material. In horse and camel it is evident there is undigested C, usually, along with bedding material, and while the cow is more completely digested, as mentioned, I saw no need to add more carbon matter.

In one area, I dumped 40 cubic yards of the manures and used the mushroom bedding as a topping. I saturated the manure with water as I shoveled out each load to the point that manure tea was running from underneath.

When this process took place several years ago, in an area where the saturated manure was three to five feet deep, I planted giant pumpkin. The transplant holes were steaming when I had to plant the seedlings with no indication of anaerobic activity. The pumpkin patch produced the area winner in the pumpkin-growing contest that year.

Terran

Wherever did you get steer manure in the Bay Area?

I've made a terrible mistake with steer manure. Last fall we put about 8 inches of fresh from the barn steer manure on some new beds that had been layered lasagna style with a base of wet newspapers and then layers of grass clippings and leaves. I thought that the manure would dry out and sort of distintegrate over a NH winter. This spring the manure is almost like concrete. Dry and hard. The layers of leaves etc never really composted. This was done on two new beds.
What do I do now? Remove the layer of steer manure and try to compost it? We should have fresh grass clippings available. I got a load of too fresh horse manure that it awaiting layering in the compost bins with grass clippings.
Apparently I still have a lot to learn. Last year we had two lasagna beds that we topped with wonderfully composted horse manure and had a fanastic garden. I thought the steer manure would be nice and loose in the spring. One of these beds is supposed to be for winter squash. Do I dare scoop out a hole, fill with a soil/aged horse manure/peat moss mix or should I remove the wintered over hard steer manure first?
Thanks for reading this. Apparently the steer manure did not contain any bedding material or very very little. When we got it it had just been scooped out of the barn.

defrost, if I had those beds I'd cover both w/ cured (friable) compost and plant w/ alfalfa or sweet clover and maybe a giant pumpkin or other non food item (bottle gourds, decorative corn) for this year and by next year they will be perfectly suitable for any thing you wish.

rj, thanks for the advice. I'll have to read up on alfalfa and other green manures. I got lucky last year with a load of well composted horse manure that included kitchen scraps and wood ash. It was beautiful. Now I know all manure is not the same.

defrost -- thought about adding some worms? MIght not have enough time to salvage this year but it is another option. I would think that they would love what you've done. Good luck