I have fed my worms horse manure that was no more than a couple of days old. The worms loved it. If you do this in large amounts, you will have a heating problem.

There is some disagreement on dewormers.

Some say that dewormer is not a problem.

Some say that you must not feed worms manure if there is any chance that the horses have been dewormed recently.

Some say to give the manure X number of days to age so the dewormer can break down.

Fresh manure will smell like manure. Aged manure won't.

My gut feeling is that if you have the worms inside and want to feed large amounts of manure, let it age about 3 weeks.

Thanks for the great advice sbryce!

i will let it age a bit before I feed it to the worms

Horse owners are generally pretty gung-ho about de-worming their horses. Thing to do....just let it lay in the sun for about a week before putting it into your bins.

Carlos Danger

I have told my wife she needs to teach her horse to poop in the worm bin. I put it in the wormbeds ASAP, usually within 24 hours. This helps keep the flies down. I also do not need to rehydrate it much, which can be difficult. Worm candy!
Ask your friend when she de-wormed last. Some do it every 6 weeks, some only 3-4 times yearly or less. As Carlos Danger said, about a week and it should be OK.
I vermicompost outdoors. No idea how much smell you may have indoors.

Good luck with the new worm treats!

Pete

I once added a single bit round donation of what was a probably a 16 bit of round drops of one mule or oxen circular things. It seemed to do the bin wonders. Like a face lift. It must have added the needed component of microbes. The thing is I was strangely happy to have found that bit of coveted poop and dragged it home. I imagine the microbes from that original good source still breed in my house's basement today being chomped on by the worms. Before then the biological balance seemed discombobulated.

How long to wait to add fresh to an indoor bin would seem more a measure of how much one likes their room mates or wants them to move out.

mendopete I agree that horse has to help by directing the donation to the proper location.

Carlos Danger I agree let the horse amendments get a bit suntanned if their provenance is suspect or unknown.

Maybe I'll have to try some fresher stuff...the loads I've been getting are well aged. The last load was scrapings and practically dried out.\

Another question about horse manure - been reading some stables use straw and some sawdust. How does that affect its use for our worms?

Dried out is still good...no, great. Just water it. It'll spring back to life.

Carlos Danger

The straw and sawdust push the C:N ratio more toward the C side. That should be all it does.

The sawdust and straw from the stables get soaked with urine. It will cause more heat than pure manure. It is all good worm food. Pre compost or use carefully in a small bin.

Okay, thanks. I believe the stuff I have been getting is straw, but not that much of it. They pick up in their riding pastures as well so it's not all stable mucking. Unfortunately the last time I went over they had just paid over $200 to have a guy haul it away - two hours before I got there! - so all that was left was scrapings from the pile.

"Strangely happy to have found that coveted poop" ... I'm told my grandmother and her second husband used to stalk around the city park and pick it up fresh from the source for their plants..."no don't bother, we'll get that!"