One of the most important is nitrogen. Nitrogen is a key nutrient for most plants. Agriculture depends on nitrogen and other nutrients found in humus. Some experts think humus makes soil more fertile.

Overall, adding humus in the soil will increase soil fertility and enhance the growth of seedlings and other vegetation while also reduce the need for watering to a minimum and help make plants more resilient to disease.

Chicken manure

Horse manure tends to provide a step up in nutrient levels because these animals are often fed supplements. This makes it a great tonic for vegetable and flowerbeds. Chook manure usually has the highest nutrient content because of the intensive nature of the diet.

Chicken manure is the feces of chickens used as an organic fertilizer, especially for soil low in nitrogen. Of all animal manures, it has the highest amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

In general, fresh manure from cows and horses contains the same amount of nitrogen. But because horse waste has significantly less water content than cow manure, when it dries it contains almost twice as much nitrogen as cow manure. Beef cow manure falls somewhere in between, at 1.7 percent nitrogen.

Cow dung is high in organic materials and rich in nutrients. It contains about 3 percent nitrogen, 2 percent phosphorus, and 1 percent potassium (3-2-1 NPK). In addition, cow manure contains high levels of ammonia and potentially dangerous pathogens.

Cow manure

However, complete fertilizers sold for flowering plants (including roses and bulbs) such as 15-30-50 or 10-30-20 contain higher amounts of phosphorus (the second number) than nitrogen or potassium and are often labeled as “blossom or bloom booster”.

In the case of phosphorus, these include commercial fertilizers – which can include rock phosphate or bone meal – or other materials like hair, the waste from some shellfish, urine, etc. Some of these sources of phosphorus have a long history of human use, while others have been created relatively recently.

Major organic sources of phosphorus include, again, certain manures, as well as bone meal and pulverized rock phosphate. Rock phosphate is a phosphorus-rich rock that is ground into fine particles that release their phosphorus slowly and over the course of many years.

The average eggshell contains about . 3% phosphorus and . 3% magnesium and traces of sodium, potassium, zinc, manganese, iron and copper.