• Question: why is horse poo good for plants?

    Asked by to Angus, Christian, Hannah, Laura, Simon on 18 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Hannah Bentham

      Hannah Bentham answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Horse poo is basically full of organic matter and is a great fertiliser. It contains lots of nutrients, especially nitrogen, which help the plant grow.
      Nitrogen is needed for growth, for chlorophyll (green pigment responsible for photosynthesis) and for seed production. Plants take up so much nitrogen from the soil that it needs to be replaced.

      I wouldn’t recommend putting it on plants in the house though. It does smell a bit 🙂

    • Photo: Simon Holyoake

      Simon Holyoake answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Great answer from Hannah, I have nothing to add to that, except to echo her suggestion of avoiding putting it on house plants!

    • Photo: Angus Ferraro

      Angus Ferraro answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      It’s kind of icky, but all poo is great for plants. Most farms have a big pit called a slurry pit where they put a lot of the poo from their animals. When they want to fertilise their fields they will spread it on their fields. That’s why farms are sometimes really smelly!

    • Photo: Christian Maerz

      Christian Maerz answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      To add to the other people’s answers, bird poo is actually one of the major sources of the nutrient phosphorus, and the country of Chile became rich by selling its huge amounts of this so-called guano to around the world.

    • Photo: Laura Roberts Artal

      Laura Roberts Artal answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      Great answers from all the other scientist and I also learnt something. I had no idea that bird poo was so full of nutirients Chirs, and that it was sold around the world!

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