Actually with manure, you need to know what the horses are eating. If they are on an all alfalfa diet (hay or pellets or cubes), their manure is heaven, and should create no weeds. If they are eating grain hay - wheat, barley, rye, oat, etc - these grains will regrow from the manure. Not sure about a diet of grass/grass hay as we don't feed it. If the horse ranch already feeds a vitamin supplement, you wouldn't need the calf manna (which is just one of a zillion horse supplements). I've never heard of adding horse vitamins as rose amendments (?) Pure composted alfalfa based manure as compost is awesome in and of itself. I'd guess that making a tea from horse manure from any diet - again even without additives, would not create a weed problem and be beneficial.

A person needs to compost what they feel comfortable with. If you are not comfortable with poo in your pile, don't use it. If you are looking for a way to dispose of pet waste and you feel comfortable composting pet waste, then go ahead and compost it. And understand that poo could be a potential vector for a disease or parasites. If you are comfortable with your piles ability to heat up to kill pathogens and you are diligent about proper hygene (washing your food and hands) then go ahead and compost poo. I do find this comment on a compost forum a bit confusing. "The post about the leggionaires disease also tells me that it is important to keep as much bacteria out of the soil as possible." I think the post about leggionaires disease was to remind people to use proper hygene and precautions when handling the compost. Trying to keep bacteria out of soil is contrary to what composting is all about. As we are adding organic matter to increase microbial activity in the soil.

gardenweed_z6a: Yeah tomato plants love worm castings! I used them last year. I had no trouble with the blight I heard so much about. Of course I raise my own seedlings.. they are mighty with the worm casts! :) Nested 5 gallon buckets are super easy to use as worm bins. I forgot to put the lid on for a couple days on them and no worms tried to escape. They don't like light, so they dig down. No worries on that! I have not tried setting the buckets to meet so the worms crawl up, but that's a great idea if we can figure out a way to allow drainage and contact to the bucket above. Maybe a tall dual open-sided cake pan to create an inner worm compound and allow air space around the side of the bucket for so the center of the bucket will be more like a core of worm composts and the worms work their way up to the top into the top bucket. Maybe a 3 bucket setup is what we need so the bottom-most bucket is the be-all-end-all to collect the drippings. Now I am really interested in trying this. It's a bit of a chore to separate the worms from the casts, so if we can figure out how to do this same thing "on the cheap" (it's already cheap if you get free 5 gallon buckets) this will be even better. I recently emptied one of my bucket bins. Here's some photos: From 022810 One bucket after 1 year of constant feeding of primarily banana peels yielded 14 cups of casts! I have not harvested from the other bucket bin, but it is easily another 14 cups of castings! From 022810

I can't agree that I don't really "care" what they eat. I'm certainly not trying to turn this into a full-fledged debate (not that I would ever get offended by having one unless someone get's offensive during it), but if I'm going to undertake any kind of 'project' (especially one that consists of playing with moldy, smelly 'waste' on a regular basis - LOL), regardless of my reasoning for doing so, I like to edumacate myself as much as possible on the information surrounding the particular subject so I can be the 'best' I can be at it. I guess I'm just the sort of person that likes continuously learning new things in as much depth as possible and strives for some extent of excellence in all areas of my life... whatever those may be. That said, I originally got into composting (as a whole) for several reasons. First and foremost, I started my first garden last year, and decided to go totally organic/non-GMO. In that quest, I began composting... primarily for soil addendum due to what I've been dealt by nature in my yard, but also, as a positive byproduct, to reduce my household's overall 'footprint' in some way (no matter how small). So for me, vermicomposting is not just a 'hobby', but I'm actually concerned about the end result and/or finished product, which is why threads such as these interest me. Bottom line (for me), I just want to understand what I can about the topic as a whole, and perhaps, eventually, figure out what is, indeed, "fact", and what is "faith". Unfortunately, I'll never be able to travel down the gut (not that I'd probably survive the gizzard) of one of my worms and see the process firsthand, so I will have to take a few things on "faith" that I read along the way... but despite that limitation, I am certainly not above discussing if what I have read, wherever, is commonly accepted in "faith" by others more experienced than me. All that clarified, I will at this point agree with certain things discussed here: 1) Worms do 'eat' bacteria, but not ONLY bacteria (which is what I initially assumed you were saying in your first post) 2) They do NOT 'eat' anything that is not broken down into "RTE" 'food' 3) Everything organic can and will eventually break down into RTE form Now given #3, horse manure may indeed be a better IMMEDIATE food (or more readily accepted) than non-RTE substitutes, but does that necessarily make it "better" for the end product... the castings? Not saying it does or doesn't (as I honestly don't know with any certainty at this point), and since the worms obviously like it (whether in captivity or the wild), I can only assume (or take on "faith", as I've yet to feed mine any) that it is, in fact, "good" in some sense of the word. Then again, in their natural habitat, there is rarely the opportunity for them to encounter what we feed them from our kitchens, so it's also possible they simply migrate to whatever is available. Either way, I am still not sure that the topic of the thread has been fully determined, however... and unless that is eventually accomplished here, why are we bothering to waste valuable hours of our days writing about (and purely speculating on) it?