Why not go for elephant manure! :-)

It is incredibly salty and I would avoid it unless it's used very sparingly. At that rates it should be used, you don't get much benefit from it.

@JamesMarconnet -- it's a small children's zoo. No elephants. Largest animals are the two camels, ponies, and one leopard.

@gargwarb -- salty? Hmmm... I'm not going to use it sparingly.

Maybe I can check on the pony manure instead of the camel... if they keep it.

Thanks for the replies!

Cindy

I have not found any good and reliable analysis of Camel manure or whether it is saltier then any other animal manure. As with any manure, animal or human, it should be properly composted before being applied to your garden because of the potential for disease pathogens that does exist in manures.

Reviewing a few basics, ruminant manure has less N than non, as they digest much better. So horses "win" in that regard.
What goes in must come out, so the quality of feed determines quality of manure. Racehorses fed a balanced alfalfa/grain diet vs. a hobby horse foraging in a weedy pasture poop richer waste.
No idea what a zoo camel eats. AIUI, the salts accumulate in the urine, not the manure, but perhaps the zoo combines everything, bedding too.
I don't think a one time application will be any problem, and it might be a good compost feedstock source. A varied diet is good for all concerned.

Just so you all know, I was just kidding about the elephant manure.

Jim Marconnet

"I was just kidding about the elephant manure."

Kidding aside, it's still manure. In their normal environs, the seeds from their forage propagate next years meals on the routes they travel.

I have not found any good and reliable analysis of Camel manure or whether it is saltier then any other animal manure.

I have some data on that stuff at my office for some work I've done with clients in Abu Dabi. I can give you some numbers if you're interested but I won't post actual documents. The salinity is super high and the real killer is that it comes primarily from sodium and chloride, which have the double whammy of desiccating roots while also being toxic to the plants when taken up, unlike other contributors to salinity like soluble calcium, potassium and magnesium, which will contribute to salinity without the specific toxicity problem.

The zoo here composts and sells manure (and perhaps bedding) from the elephants, giraffes, and zebras.

A friend has tried it with reasonable results.

I will test it as potting soil (perhaps with ground pine bark) for palms and on some fruit trees and taller vegetables next year.

the salts accumulate in the urine, not the manure
Not true.

Wouldn't that depend to some extent on what the camels were eating? Figuring here, camel-diet-wise, that a zoo diet in the USA might be hay, while a Abu Dabi camel might be snarfing down some desert plants that have a different chemical composition?

Also, the horse manure generally available here is from shoveling out stables, so there is plenty of urine mixed in was well.

"the salts accumulate in the urine, not the manure."
"Not true."

"I have some data on that stuff at my office for some work I've done with clients in Abu Dabi. I can give you some numbers if you're interested but I won't post actual documents."

I'd like to read the documents, including the Abu Dhabi material. Can you provide a link?

As I stated in my original post.
I can give you some numbers if you're interested but I won't post actual documents.
Sorry, it's a legal thing.

By the way, you may be on to something regarding the diet but my gut feeling is that differences in diet will only go so far. Their physiology is very different from cows, horses, etc. (primarily how their body uses water, which I'm guessing affects solute concentrations in their tissues and waste). I could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet that it's going to be salty regardless. I'm also taking into account the fact that zoos will usually try to mimic the diet that their species typically has access to.

Anyway, I have averaged out some results and here are a few of the highlights.

The salinity level of the camel manure typically came in around 30 to 35 dS/m. For comparison, a soil salinity level of 3.0 dS/m is considered elevated and could cause some plants to start showing foliage burn and reduced vigor. (Another fun factoid I'll throw in here just for kicks ECw of sea water is around 40 dS/m or so.)

Of course, you would be amending with the stuff rather than planting directly into it so let's explore that a little more.
Let's say you were amending a sandy loam soil at a typical compost rate of 4 cu. yds. per 1000 sq. ft., tilled to a depth of 6 inches. (to get an organic content of approximately 20% by volume.)
That would raise your salinity by about 10 dS/m, which would be on top of whatever the salinity level in the soil was before you started amending. 10 dS/m alone would be enough to cause most plants to show burning and stunting. Many plants would just plain die.

Also consider the fact that about 70% of the salinity level is coming from soluble sodium. (around 250 milliequivalents per liter) Also, soluble chloride was found to be around 200 to 300 milliequivalents per liter. The high sodium and chloride values brings up the specific toxicity issues I described above.

Also the abundant sodium is not balanced by calcium and magnesium and you end up with an SAR of around 35 or so. (An SAR of 6 is considered elevated) and use of such a high sodium / low calcium and magnesium material could bring about an elevated SAR in the soil, which can impede soil structure and water infiltration.

I also noticed something else that I'd forgotten about. The boron values in the samples I'm looking at come in at about 5 to 6 parts per million (ppm) in saturation extract. If used at the 4 cu. yd. rate, this would be likely to bump the boron level above the threshold at which a broad range of plants start to show boron toxicity symptoms (burning of foliage and poor growth performance). The really fun part about boron is that it does not leach readily and, consequently, correcting an elevated boron level in the soil is particularly challenging.

Could you use it at a very low rate and avoid the problems? Well sure, but like I said before, a rate low enough to avoid the problems would provide very little benefit compared to other materials. Of course, maybe all camel manures aren't equal but with the information I have, I would stick with something less exotic.

By the way:

Reviewing a few basics, ruminant manure has less N than non, as they digest much better. So horses "win" in that regard.

You sound like you know more about that than me so I'll have to trust you on that one. The data bares this out also. The nitrogen content (along with P,K, Can and Mg) are very low in the samples I'm looking at.

Be careful! Your tomatoes might have humps! Sorry I couldn't resist!

I'm thinkin' just how tough life is for a plant in the Sahara or Arabian or Gobi desert. Ya got your lack of water, blazing heat / freezing nights, and then some camel comes and relieves him/herself right beside you.

(Very interesting stuff, gargwarb, thanks!)

Gonebananas, Here in Columbia, S.C. they sale all the Riverbank Zoo Manures/ compost-bedding.