NITROGEN DYNAMICS OF BIODYNAMIC HORN MANURE
JEFFREY ENDELMAN, MALCOLM GARDNER, JOSEPH BRINKLEY, HUGH COURTNEY, WALI VIA, AND BRIAN WICKERT
ABSTRACT
BIODYNAMIC AGRICULTURE ORIGINATED in the 1920s and was a progenitor of modern organic farming. A unique element of biodynamics is the horn manure preparation, which is made by filling cow horns with cow manure in the fall, burying them in topsoil over the winter, and applying the contents to soil as a dilute, aerated spray. To further our understanding of the preparation, a research project was conducted in which horn manure was characterized using standard techniques for compost analysis, and employing glass jars as a control treatment. Across multiple experiments we observed significantly higher total nitrogen, higher nitrate, lower pH, and lower respiration in manure buried in horns compared to jars. Furthermore, there was an inverse relationship between nitrate and pH, possibly due to the stoichiometry of nitrification. In one experiment, a mass balance calculation indicated no significant loss of nitrogen in the horns compared with 37% loss in the jars. We conclude that using horns as vessels promotes different nitrogen dynamics in manure compared to glass jars.