Ideas for cheap homemade manure spreader?

[flyngti]

Does anyone have ideas/plans for building a small manure spreader? My dealer will sell me a new spreader, but I sure don't have $2000 burning a hole in my pocket. It's actually not manure per se that I want to spread, but composted horse manure. Since it has a compost texture, I don't think a broadcast cone-type spreader would work as the material would clog the opening. We're only talking about spreading on 1.5 acres of pasture so I don't need anything fancy. I'd just rather not have to do it by raking the material out of the trailer by hand as my wife drives around.

[Grrrr]

I can definitely say a fertiliser cone spreader will not work.

Is there any chance of getting a secondhand spreader in your area, I know they pop up quite frequently in the UK.

I was going to say drive around and fork it off, but saw you had said you didn't want to do that.

One idea I have would be to dump it around the place a bit with a loader and then take something like a chain harrow to spread it all out well. It could work but would be time consuming.

[kennyd]

You might want to post in the "attachments" forum, it will get more views and this is not a JD specific question...

[flyngti]

Originally Posted by kennyd

You might want to post in the "attachments" forum, it will get more views and this is not a JD specific question...

I spend so much time in this forum, I forgot that there were others! Now that I look, I see that there is a Build-It Yourself forum. I'll search there as well.

[flyngti]

Originally Posted by Grrrr

Is there any chance of getting a secondhand spreader in your area, I know they pop up quite frequently in the UK.

I wish...I've been keeping an eye out but used spreaders seem to be pretty hard to come by around here. People who own them seem to want to keep them.

[PBinWA]

Originally Posted by flyngti

I wish...I've been keeping an eye out but used spreaders seem to be pretty hard to come by around here. People who own them seem to want to keep them.

There's a couple down here right now:

portland craigslist > for sale / wanted: search for "manure spreader"

Might be worth a drive.

[texasjohn]

Load up your FEL... drive into pasture... joggle the joystick as you drive along and just dribble the stuff out... If you want to get fancy, you can make a wooden dam that fits on the front of the FEL and has an appropriately sized slot for the stuff to dribble out... this should keep from hitting a bump and spilling everything in one spot.

[Malvern]

flyngti

Try this one, my wife has this one an works great including spreading bits of hay.

Newer Spreader - The Manure Spreader that's perfect for smaller horse farms!

Best of luck,
Malvern

[flyngti]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Spreading using the FEL is a good idea. I use this technique for "sprinking" gravel by backing up with a full load and tapping the joystick to uncurl the bucket. The problem is that my compost pile is 500+ feet from my pastures and I'd be making a LOT of trips.

I think I'm going to try and rig up something with my little Craftsman dump trailer. It has more volume than the FEL bucket so I won't need to make as many trips. While I'd love to buy a real spreader, my budget just doesn't allow for it right now.

[texasjohn]

OK... how about this... horse manure is not TOO heavy... maybe you could rig up some kind of drag with solid bottom... put a number of bucket loads on it and drag it out to the pasture, then dribble it with FEL out there. Around here along the interstate there are tarps and tarp portions that tear off the trucks and end up along the side of the road for the taking... they might be used as a part of a skid device if you could locate some. If you do end up using some sort of trailer, don't forget to fill your bucket as well when you drag it back and forth