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Remember, I lived in the city for much of my adult life so sorry if this is a silly question. But - is there any reason to use the bagged manure you buy in the store over a fresh cow patty? We got a few cows, it seems silly to buy manure, but someone told me that there could be parasites or something in the cow patty that will hurt my garden. That just didn't make sense to me but I don't know for sure.
Yep, lots of people think the manure used should be old, dried, composted, etc. before use. Now I don't have the scientific education to prove otherwise, but when I started a fresh garden spot in the Fall, I tilled it, then put a 5' x 5' round bale of hay in it so the cattle ate there and did what they normally do in a feedlot. When that bale was gone, I put another one just a little ways from where the first one was. My new garden got well fertilized and I tilled it all in before planting in the spring.
I always thought it was a waste of money to buy what you can get for free. My Dad used to clean out my Grandad's chicken house for the manure. When I grew up and had my own garden I looked for someone with horses that had a pile that needed to be trimmed down, especially if it was well rotted. We have a lot of horses around here but the cows are all but gone.
I have never seen any real proof of the old vs. the new. if anything the only thing I have caught is the flock of flies that come about between them and its still a pretty slim tie.
There is a whole science around this question. Never heard the disease part of it in any conversations but i suppose it is possible. The main thing that comes up is the amount of nutrients in the manure esp. nitrogen, different animals have different trace elements depending on what your particular soil needs are. I prefer composted even when using a spreader in the field.
Fresh chicken manure can burn a crop because of so much nitrogen.
Try to stay upwind of the stuff when spreading!!
I think a lot of it is just the smell issue. I didn't think there was any difference. We used to have a field of corn behind us and every season the farmers would come and spread manure on it. Oh my! You could not open your windows for about a week. The smell was so intense!
Have to retract a statement about disease, suddenlly remembered a CSI episode where they were irrigating with fresh runoff from a feed lot and it did spread disease and i think the spinach recall earlier this year was the same issue.
Composting gets rid of the smell and if done correctly the weed seeds and disease as well, now if i could only remember where i stashed the manure spreader where i would not forget it.
I have always heard that composting manure lessens weed seeds and e coli.
Here is a section I found on an article about fertilizing a garden.
The "Read More" link takes you to an extensive article about feeding the plants it different ways.
"The plant food in "green" or fresh manure is not available, and does not become so until it is released by the decay of the organic matters inside. Now the time possible for growing a crop of garden vegetables is limited; in many instances it is only sixty to ninety days. The plants want their food ready at once; there is no time to be lost waiting for manure to rot in the soil. That is a slow process- especially so in clayey or heavy soils. So on your garden use only manure that is well rotted and broken up."
Read more: Manure Vs. Fertilizer- Which Should be Used in Your Organic Vegetable Garden?
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Also as someone already said, fresh manure can "burn" you plants.
The only thing I compost at present is grass clippings and mulched leaves. Not much in the way of nutrients but it really helps with the tilth. I'm only growing flowers and it seems to help a lot.