In a vague way, I understand that horse manure, given time and a little turning, can become excellent fertilizer, at least for home gardens. I'm trying to figure out if it is worth time & money to work with it more.

We have three horses, on 18 acres, and may someday reach a total of ten horses. Right now we spread manure on unused fields, but in a year from now that will be fenced in and there will be horses grazing on it. I hope to be able to carve out one unused pasture for rotation..

I'm thinking about keeping manure in some kind of pile, informal or maybe in a structure. This would be to make compost out of it. I've got a compact tractor I could use to 'turn' the compost.

My fiance is worried about flies and how it looks.. the only place well out of site is the farthest distance from the barn.

One other factor, is that I've had a bit of excavation on the property and lost a lot of topsoil.

I've seen pictures of manure 'bins' that just had two walls, one on each side, so that manure could be dumped at one end and compost could be taken away on the other end (new manure would be pushed into the structure and the whole pile would be pushed out the other end, with the other end being compost because it was in there so long..??)

So I've got a lot of questions:
- if I keep piling compost in a heap, won't I get more flies?
- would I have less flies if I spread the manure over the pastures?
- can horses graze safely in a pasture that has manure spread in it?
- can/should I build a structure to hold the manure while it is composting?
- if I make compost, will it be easy to get rid of (give away or even sell) the excess stuff I can't use?
- is runoff from a manure pile bad for the environment? Should it be off the ground/protected from rain?
- can I mix it with the excavated dirt and 're-create' topsoil? If so, how? mixed or layered?

Signed, Confused in the Country.