protein in cow manure

does anyone have an idea of how much protein is typically found in cow manure?

Reply to
Malcom "Mal" Reynolds
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Sorry, I don't eat cown manure so have never been interested in it's protein level. I've only ever been interested in the NPK.

Reply to
Farm1

No, but it will be proportional to the nitrogen in the manure.

? Manure Chicken Diary cow Horse Steer Rabbit ? N 1.1 .257 .70 .70 2.4 ? P .80 .15 .30 .30 1.4 ? K .50 .25 .60 .40 .60 ? Sheep Alfalfa Fish Emulsion ? N .70 3 5 ? P .30 1 1 ? K .90 2 1

Reply to
Billy

If the cow is healthy not much protein at all. There are some nitrogen compounds though that are useful as plant nutrients. If you particularly want to increase the nitrogen content of your soil bird manure (chicken, turkey, pigeon, etc) has much more N compounds than cow but be careful as it will burn your plants when fresh or if applied too heavily, whereas cow is not likely to.

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Reply to
David Hare-Scott

Andy comments If you're using it as fertilizer for your garden, be aware that unless it is really composted well, the hundreds of undigested seeds in it will keep you busy weeding for years. I have mixed feeling about cow poop, and might suggest using bird poop, if you have access to it, instead....

Andy in Eureka, Texas

Reply to
AndyS

Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (45BC) ?????

Andy in Eureka, Texas

Reply to
AndyS

A garbeled version thereof used as demo text by printers. It is generally giberish.

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Reply to
Drew Lawson

heck I don't eat plenty of things, but occasionally I'm curious about other aspects of food other than it's taste

but thanks anyway

Reply to
Malcom "Mal" Reynolds

I think Fran's point (she may correct me) is that as a gardener one is not interested in foodstuffs or their components, like protein, as inputs as one might in the cases of say stockfeed or your own diet.

Plants are autotrophs, that is they don't eat, they take in fairly substances (air, water, minerals etc) and photosynthesise more complex substances using sunlight energy. Those complex substances may be food for organisms that do eat (heterotrophs) like cows and us. The inputs we are interested in, NPK and other elements, are often loosely called "plant food" which can be confusing in comparison with animal nutrients such as protein, carbohydrates etc as the two are not similar classes of substances nor do they have the same role in metabolism. Gardening terminology is also loose in talking about inputs as elements when to a chemist none of them are present in the form of elements but as compounds and molecules.

This leads us to the case of N (nitrogen) as a plant input which is what I think you were asking about. Although it is four fifths of air plants cannot absorb N directly as nitrogen gas is a molecule of two atoms (N2) and that molecule is extremely stable and chemically inaccessible to the plant. So plants need some help to absorb N. This can be from microbes that fix nitrogen, such microbes can take in N2 from the air and produce useable N compounds. Often such are symbiotic with plants as in legumes. Plants can also get N as compounds as part of synthetic fertilisers, manures and composts, and from rain during electrical storms. This is why the N component of manures in its NPK value is of interest not the protein content.

If this was not the point of your question ask and I will try again.

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

Uh, you forgot the amino acids that come from micro-organisms, which is what organic gardening is all about, i.e. the feeding of micro flora and fauna.

Reply to
Billy

:-)) Now that is a far more technical explanation than I'd have given.

But I agree with your summation. IF I ate any of the cow poop I put on my plants or considered the poop to be human 'food', I might want to know it's protein content. Or if one or more of our cattle were ill, I may be interested in protein passed in the animal's faeces. When it comes to cow poop I use on my plants, however, I am only interested in the NPK of the poop.

(And I too wondered if the OP really might have meant to ask about the N content of cow poop. But that was not the question asked even though asking that question of other gardeners would make sense whereas asking about protein didn't. Given how many trolls we've had here in the past who knows what prompted the OP to ask such a question.......)

Reply to
Farm1

David Hare-Scott wrote: ...

i would be interested in a good list of studies done on actual nitrogen uptake from soil using tagged sources (radio isotopes?).

so far in my readings i have come across one study mentioned (which i didn't follow up on) that said very little of applied nitrogen from chemical fertilizers actually is taken up by plants, but that it must act somehow by freeing other nitrogen in the soil/organisms that plants can take up. this was consistent for both the first and second year after application...

so i'm curious if anyone else has gotten into this topic beyond the surface?

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Didn't like my thumb-nail on organic gardening? The ecology of the soil encapsulating the life and death cycles in the microorganisms, as well as their symbiotic relationships with the garden plants is what nurtures plants naturally (think slow release). One of the problems with chemical fertilizers (chemferts) is that they are water soluble. Clay in the soil will mitigate this to some extent by ionic bonding, but, by and large, the the chemferts get washed away to become someone's else's problem (blue babies, ocean dead-zones).

Reply to
Billy

That's true but the context was inputs not stocks. Once present the microflora act as a storage and exchange medium but the OP cannot feasibly add microflora to his soil as a source of N for the whole community.

D
Reply to
David Hare-Scott

What are you on about? Are you looking for the fate of the applied NO3-, or what?

Ammonium ions are positively charged and therefore stick (are sorbed) to negatively charged clay particles and soil organic matter. The positive charge prevents ammonium nitrogen from being washed out of the soil (or leached) by rainfall. In contrast, the negatively charged nitrate ion is not held by soil particles and so can be washed down the soil profile, leading to decreased soil fertility and nitrate enrichment of downstream surface and groundwaters.

Especially with the implementation of organic farming methods.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

(Available at a library near you, as long as they remain open.) p.45 - 46 Hungry for fossil fuel as hybrid corn is, farmers still feed it far more than it can possibly eat, wasting most of the fertilizer they buy. Maybe it's applied at the wrong time of year; maybe it runs off the fields in the rain; maybe the farmer puts down extra just to play it safe. "They say you only need a hundred pounds per acre. I don't know. I'm putting on up to two hundred. You don't want to err on the side of too little," Naylor explained to me, a bit sheepishly. "It's a form of yield insurance."

Reply to
Billy

nitrogen isotopes used in studies of actual nitrogen uptake by plants.

yes, the fate of applied nitrogen compounds, but actual studies of tagged compounds using nitrogen isotopes.

i've come across only one reference so far in my readings and was wondering if anyone else here had come across any other studies of this type.

yes, but this is different than what i am asking about.

...

songbird

Reply to
songbird

I've heard that people use isotopes for these kinds of experiments.

Hmm. Bit tricky that. Natural Nitrogen (N) consists of two stable isotopes, nitrogen-14, which makes up the vast majority of naturally occurring nitrogen, and nitrogen-15. Stable huh? Well they're out.

Fourteen radioactive isotopes (radioisotopes) [radioactive! That's more like it] have also been found so far, with atomic masses ranging from 10 to 25, and one nuclear isomer, 11mN. All of these radioisotopes are short-lived, with the longest-lived one being nitrogen-13 with a half-life of 9.965 minutes. Nine minutes? You'll have to be quick about your experiment ;O))

All of the others have half-lives below 7.15 seconds, with most of these being below five-eighths of a second. Oh, how the time flies!

Well, maybe you should change your question ;O))

In any event, most of the applied nitrogen salts go straight down the drain, and are wasted on the garden, and pollute the environment, even if they do turn a profit for fertilizer companies.

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Reply to
Billy

...

ah, but that is ok, just that if most natural nitrogen is N14 then you use a high portion of N15 and then track how much of that gets adsorbed. this must be what the experiment i saw in passing did because they didn't say anything about it being difficult or very short term.

or they were using other atom isotopes for tracking... can't say for sure.

heh, good to know.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Tim Flannery in "The Weather Makers" does a riff on various isotopes of oxygen, and carbon and what the ratios tell us about past weather conditions (I've forgotten).

There is also which talks about predators elevating N15. Perhaps it will ring a bell on what you're trying to remember.

Good luck,

Reply to
Billy

I asked about the protein in cow poop in reference to a discussion in another group, which sadly, I have forgotten. it wasn't a troll and I'm sure that one day I'll remember the point. I did some research and nothing came up. I thought here was a good place to ask. It is/was, it's only my memory and my failure to read all my newsgroups in a timely manner that makes the whole thing seem senseless/pointless at this time.

but my intentions were good

Reply to
Malcom "Mal" Reynolds

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