Cow manure is generally considered one of the best amendments you can add to your garden. At least it used to be. Here’s how manure in the garden may actually destroy your soil and plants for a long time.
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The following article was written by David the Good of The Survival Gardener.
David and I first connected after he wrote an honest and thorough review of The Suburban Micro-Farm for Mother Earth News. David is a knowledgeable expert at home-scale food production, and right away I wanted to make his acquaintance!
The truth is, herbicide-laced manure is a widespread problem that can completely destroy a garden. David has been on the front lines of this problem, and was one of the first to sound the alarm.
I’m grateful he is sharing this information with us so that we may prevent this devastating and costly misfortune from occurring in our own gardens. — Amy
This Manure Will Destroy Your Garden!
Cow manure is rich in nitrogen, organic matter and a variety of minerals, adding nutrition and tilth to the soil and ensuring rich harvests of green and happy vegetables. It’s generally considered to be one of the best amendments you can add to your garden.
At least it used to be.
Now adding manure to your garden is playing Russian roulette with your plants. There’s a very good chance that it will completely destroy your beds and cause your plants to grow into twisted parodies of their proper growth pattern before dying ugly and unproductive deaths.
Here’s how.
[What about other types of manure, you wonder? We’ll cover that, too…]
A Load of Manure is a Gardener’s Paradise…Naturally
Some time back I did a very normal thing for an organic gardener: I bought a trailer of manure from a local dairy farm and had it dropped in my front yard.
I then proceeded to spread it across multiple beds, add it around the trees in my front yard food forest, and turn it into the ground along the front fence line where I was planting dozens of newly purchased thornless blackberries.
>>>Read more about creating food forests.
A few weeks later, I planted my gardens – and everything started going very, very wrong. My
transplanted tomatoes and eggplants started to twist up. They were still green, but their leaves were thick and curled and the amount of new growth was much smaller than it should have been.
Something was very wrong.
My thought upon seeing the weird growth in my tomatoes and eggplants was that I was dealing with a virus. They were both Solanaceae family – maybe it was some weird and horrible disease I’d never seen before?
Then some of the edges of the blackberry leaves started twisting and turning brown.
A virus wouldn’t jump families – blackberries are Rosaceae! I had to look elsewhere.
I noticed the blackberry leaves were deep green, despite their strange growth. Perhaps there was too much nitrogen in the manure? The manure had been composted for over six months, according to the farmer. And it certainly didn’t look or smell fresh. It was earthy and crumbly, well-aged stuff. It looked just like something you’d want to add to your garden.
Then the mulberry tree started looking weird. And the pecan trees and the olive exhibited the same symptoms.
Would you like to learn more about using soil amendments safely in the garden?
You’ll find more information like this in my book, The Suburban Micro-Farm.
That Herbicide is Poison
From my reading, it wasn’t too much nitrogen. The symptoms were too strange. And it wasn’t a virus.
The only thing in common between all these sick plants was one big load of manure.
I called the local master gardeners and shared the symptoms and they had nothing helpful to suggest, so I started searching on my own, looking up phrases like “twisting leaves manure,” until I came across an article about a community garden disaster on the left coast.
They had purchased a load of manure compost, then lost many of their plants because of a recently released herbicide designed for hay growers and cattle farmers.
Aminopyralid.
I had met my nemesis.
I called the farmer who had sold me the manure and asked him if he’d sprayed anything on his hay fields. He told me he had tried a new product recommended by the University of Florida for the elimination of spiny pigweed, an obnoxious recurring weed in his pastures. “It worked really well,” he told me.
I shared that all my plants were dying and asked if he could find out what he’d sprayed. I was pretty sure I knew already, but when he sent me a picture of the label, I knew for sure.
It was Grazon, an aminopyralid-based toxin from Dow AgroSciences.
Herbicide Damage -Eggplant. Image by David The Good.
Contaminated compost: aminopyralid effect on tomatoes. Photo by Karen Land.
Grazon Damage. Image by Luzette of Buffalo Girl Soaps.
Toxic Manure in the Garden is No Joke
The farmer was quite upset by my report. He had sprayed his pasture the previous summer. When I called him that was about nine months before, and he was told Grazon was safe for animals to consume.
Armed with my new research, I shared that the toxin could continue killing plants for years, even after being eaten by animals, then excreted, then composted for months.
He refunded the $60 I’d spent for the manure and apologized, telling me he wouldn’t spray again and that he had a lot of people that bought his manure.
I didn’t blame him for the mistake and I didn’t ask for his help replacing the thousand dollars or so of destroyed produce and perennials. We all make mistakes and he seemed like a decent guy.
I reserved my blame instead for the University of Florida, Dow AgroSciences and the government that lets these poisons into our gardens.
By the time I knew what was going on, I had lost the first half of the growing season. Most of my garden beds were loaded with this manure – and my poor blackberries were twisted and dying, along with multiple fruit trees.
>> Subscribe to get my free Guide to Organic Soil Amendments.
This situation is bad manure, and gardeners everywhere need to be warned!
I was angry and feeling sick over the whole thing, so I called my friend Carolyn who owned the local Natural Awakenings magazine and asked if I could write an article warning other gardeners about the new danger of using manure in the garden.
She agreed, and that led to me being contacted by Mother Earth News and becoming a blogger with them. Eventually, the manure fiasco led to me dedicating myself to making all my own compost – and that led to my book Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting.
My manure-in-the-garden fiasco ended up launching my writing career. God works in mysterious ways. My terrible year of poisoned gardens ended up saving a lot of other people’s gardens – or helping them figure out what happened after a poisoning event.
Person after person has written me to share tales of wrecked gardens. Some people lost beds because of contaminated hay they used in their compost. Others lost beds due to manure. Still others purchased compost or garden soil and had it kill their plants.
Aminopyralids are all over the place now and it’s a minefield for gardeners.
New gardeners are really in a bad place now, as they often don’t know what to expect from their plants. When Aminopyralid symptoms strike, they just assume they made a mistake, not that their beds were poisoned.
Here’s how to keep your gardens safe.
1. Don’t purchase compost.
Many facilities still don’t have proper safeguards in place to keep their product uncontaminated.
2. Don’t use manure from grazing animals.
That neighbor offering you well-rotted horse manure? A decade ago I would have said “great!” Now I would say “absolutely not!”.
Though your neighbor might not spray his fields, he likely buys hay – and a lot of hayfields are now sprayed. It happens again and again and again. I have heard reports that even store-bought bagged manure is killing gardens.
Just say no to manure in the garden from grazing animals.
Remember, though, that Grazon is used to kill broadleaf weeds in hay. If you can get manure from non-grazing animals, it should be fine. Chickens and rabbits should be okay, unless you use straw or hay as bedding. Rabbits may eat a little grass but they are usually fed with alfalfa pellets and alfalfa is not sprayed with Aminopyralids.
3. Avoid hay and straw in your compost or as mulch.
A friend lost a chunk of her food forest plants after picking up a load of well-rotted hay and spreading it around. Members of the grass family may be sprayed with Aminopyralid-containing pesticides. Avoid.
4. Make your own compost.
Learn to compost everything. Fall leaves, shredded paper, fish guts, eggshells, lasagna – whatever. The more organic material you can add to your compost pile and eventually to your gardens, the less you need to buy to amend your gardens.
I compost all kitchen scraps, including meat. Gather lots of leaves or grass clippings from your (unsprayed!) yard and throw them over stuff that might stink. You can also cover your bin to keep out vermin. Nature will do the rest. It’s just a matter of time, not perfection.
This isn’t an easy time to be a gardener. The world is toxic and there are plenty of pitfalls, including the use of manure as an amendment.
I’m not exaggerating when I say this is a widespread problem. It’s no longer a good idea to add manure to your garden. If you do, you’re running a big risk and can destroy your plants because someone sprayed toxins on a field somewhere far from your garden.
It’s not easy to find good alternatives, but it needs to be done. Watch your back and start making your own compost. It may save you some serious heartache.
Get David’s tips for fixing Grazon contamination.
Note from Amy: It’s important to support your local farmers who are committed to doing honest and good work. If you have a farmer who has been supplying you material such as manure, hay, straw, or compost, then I encourage you to start a conversation about herbicide contamination. Ask questions. Learn about their process. If they have control over all of the materials in the supply chain and emphatically say they do not spray, then they deserve to have your business.
If the farmer outsources any of those materials (hay or straw?), it’s more difficult to know for sure. Ask for the contact info of their supplier. Ask more hard questions. Go with your gut. Don’t assume that all farmers are dishonest, because that is certainly not the case, but obviously you want to be cautious. If they are spraying and simply have no idea how terrible it is, then you get to educate them. Farmers are busy, and when their extension office tells them something is safe, they may go with it, having no idea of its wrath.
Have you suffered problems due to herbicide-laced manure in the garden? What changes will you make to your gardening routine to avoid it?
David The Good is the author of multiple gardening books including Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting, Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening, Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening and his latest release Turned Earth: A Jack Broccoli Novel, the world’s first gardening thriller. David has been featured in Mother Earth News, Backwoods Home, Heirloom Gardener Magazine, The Grow Network and other outlets. He is also the creator of TheSurvivalGardener.com. David currently lives with his wife Rachel and their children somewhere in Central America where they collect rare edible plants and enjoy growing everything from ackee to yams.
Isabella says
My husband and I had a similar problem several years ago after harvesting free manure from the free-range cattle areas near our home. After we contaminated our entire urban homestead, we discovered that the herbicides are a major culprit as are the inoculations that they give the cattle every year. These chemicals, from both sources, contaminate the cows and their fecal matter, but usually they are slaughtered before there is an outward manifestation of the toxicity.
The best advice I was given to rectify this soil contamination problem was this: Tear out our gardens and water the ground until it is fully saturated every day. Don’t try to plant grass seeds or anything else, just let the weeds come up for a couple of years. After 2 or 3 years of doing this, grass seed can be spread. Two years after that raised beds can be attempted.
We thought about digging out all our soil, but it just was not financially feasible for us, so we opted to flush the toxins out with water and time.
I am sorry this happened to you, I wish you the best of luck. Also, thank you for writing about your experience, it is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
Misti says
Wow, what a disheartening experience for you. I can’t imagine having to basically start over but even after a few years of waiting.
Thanks for the information David and Amy!
David The Good says
Members of the grass family will grow in Grazon-contaminated beds, so corn, wheat, etc., should be fine, since they’re not targeted by the toxin. As for eating them, though, I can’t find information on safety. It’s frustrating. Another thing that helps: stir in crushed charcoal. That will absorb the toxin and neutralize some of it.
Amy says
Oh, good idea with the charcoal.
Jenny says
I think I’m having issues with my garden from straw I used as mulch! And I don’t know where to find organic (inexpensive) mulch around here. In fact, this spring when I had waited too long I couldn’t even find non-organic straw. So my garden this year produced little crops (and because I didn’t have 15min per day ?) very many WEEDS! I started out keeping up but wasn’t able and the “chop & drop” isn’t too easy to do when you plant intensively but still have weeds growing between everything! I’m thinking of trying the idea I read on an Oregon Cottage a few years ago: lay down black plastic sheeting over my cleared beds for the winter and in spring, uncover & rake up the dead weed debris.
I’m just south of Dayton, Ohio and this was NOT a good garden year for me!
Shauna says
I found that plain cardboard underneath a thick layer of cedar mulch works very well for keeping the weeds down. It’s not perfect during the growing season, since it does eventually decay and go away, but it’s been a lifesaver for the very wet summer we’ve had this year (I’m in Columbus, Ohio, so not far from you). Plus, it acts as extra compost.
David The Good says
The plastic sheeting does do a good job in killing weeds and giving you a good space to work with in spring. If you use the woven landscape material DeWitt Sunbelt sells, it also lets water through and doesn’t break down quickly. You can use it for as long as a decade, putting it down when needed, then pulling it again to plant.
Amy says
I’m in favor of solutions that reduce maintenance, and plastic sheeting will do that, but I do try to stay away from buying it due to the environmental cost of plastic production. It’s a waste problem as well. It can break into little pieces in the soil as it gets older. That said, I have used old sheets of plastic that I already had around.
I do like sheet mulching with cardboard in between rows and topping with mulch like shredded leaves and/or grass clippings. It’s important to keep the cardboard fully covered, though, or it could suck the moisture out of the soil during hot, dry periods.
Susan says
Domestic pet rabbits eat grass hay as the primary source of their diet. Vegetables and timothy pellets form the balance of their diet. Typically only breeder rabbits or feeder rabbits would be on an alfalfa pellet throughout their life. I’m wondering if this is what happened to my pineapple sage 🙁
David The Good says
I didn’t realize domestic rabbits are fed on grass hay – thank you for the information. It very well could be the problem. We fed our rabbits on some alfalfa along with a lot of cut weeds and grass from our homestead, which we knew wasn’t sprayed.
Steven Shantz says
Human urine is looking more and more attractive all the time. Disgusting? Yup. But get over it. It is liquid gold! Ive been collecting and usi g mine for several years and i can’t speak too highly of it.
David The Good says
It works like a charm. Just don’t tell the neighbors.
Amy says
Yes!!! 🙂
Shayla says
Time to start investigating a compost bin so I can make my own (we currently compost through the city). What do you recommend as an alternative to straw mulch? Would organic straw mulch be safe, if the farmer can verify that they do not spray? I’ll be planting onions and garlic in the next week and was going to use straw to winterize them.
Shauna says
Comfrey mulching! Comfrey makes for an excellent mulch and doubles as green manure (fertilization, nitrogen activation, and more).
Also, as long as you don’t spray your yard, grass clippings make a good mulch, too.
David The Good says
Organic straw should be fine. I have also cut grass in unused areas and added that. For fall gardens, I have also used tree leaves to winterize.
TimP says
Apparently it’s just as lethal for Lucerne and Pea straw as it is for veges, (which makes sense since they are both legumes like your beans) so they should at least be safe from this herbicide.
(Most likely any farmer who wants to grow either of them in the future will hopefully not spray any of his fields)
Lauren says
This is very eye-opening, thanks! Always good to read one of David the Good’s articles!
David The Good says
Thank you, Lauren. I love Amy’s book and was glad to have the chance to send her a post.
Shawnti Wells says
Thank you for this information! I was trying to figure out why my plants were curling & twisting… Thanks again, ~Tay~
David The Good says
I’m very sorry to hear that. You can’t be blamed for not knowing – it’s just starting to become better known. Many people just assume they made a mistake in their growing.
Charles says
Oh no! I had mushroom compost delivered last year, so after reading this, I did a search to see what’s in it. It can include hay, straw, and horse manure, among other things. Oh well… it’s too late for these beds. We’ll see what happens next spring.
David The Good says
You can test some of it by planting beans first. If they sprout, you’re not out of the woods, but it’s a good sign. Watch after that for the development of the secondary and tertiary sets of leaves. If they twist and curl, you’re in trouble. If they don’t, you should be in the clear.
Kelly says
I am relieved to hear that alfalfa is not sprayed with Grazon. I Have been trying to find organic alfalfa pellets for my goats and it is just not available around here. I was afraid to buy the non-organic version for fear of poisoning my garden as you described (not to mention the goats!). Thank you for this information!
David The Good says
You bet. Grazon is targeted to kill broadleaf “weeds,” so if you are feeding animals with something that isn’t a grass, if should be safe from aminopyralid contamination.
Virginia says
I recently bought a house in the California desert city of 29 Palms. We dug out all the local sand/caliche {to 2 ft deep} and replaced it all with….free manure from a mix of horses, cows, goats, to help with conserving water I have a ton of straw on all gardens & trees! Suddenly my tomato plants started making smaller & smaller leaves, dark green…lost almost all 300 tomato plants, some okra leaves are now smaller & twisted as well….my Japanese eggplant was huge & super loaded, I recently added more straw….it died less than a week later!
I compost everything…unfortunately, I have also composted all my plant material so I guess my compost is poisoned as well.
I have pictures of the leaves from the few tom plants left & would like to submit them for some expert advice to see if this is my problem. My peanuts are pegging out but some are turning yellow, can they be saved? On the other hand my luffa sponges are growing like mad & putting on their 3rd flush of “fruit” now in Sept! They don’t have as much manure or straw as the rest of the garden which has between 1 & 2 feet of straw around the plants & I water thru it as well as into bottles with holes buried around the plants. After raking this straw out of my gardens how should I dispose of it?
Since sunflowers absorb heavy metals & some chemicals, is it possible to sunflower the hell out of my garden to help clean it a little if this is the problem? Will the flowers from my plants poison the bees or hummingbirds? Pollinators are a premium out here!
Can I submit some pix & if so where please? I have no choice but to continue planting here since we have no community gardens and we can’t afford to replace all the dirt & we need the food!
Freddie says
Wow. 🙁 Any potential concerns with free mulch from tree-cutting businesses? I’m a new gardener and am starting with sugar sand that (I just found out yesterday) has been sprayed with Round-Up on a regular basis. I was planning on starting with several car loads of horse manure, but this article gives me pause. I was also going to try no-till, composting in situ, and basically just focusing on growing edible nitrogen-fixers the first season or two. Any advice, or further cautions? Thank you for this timely article!
Amy says
Wood chips can be a great start in a situation like this where you need a lot of organic matter to get started, and where you can allow them to break down for at least one year, longer if you can manage. As with everything you bring on your property, there are risks in the unknown. A tree may be chipped that had a poison ivy vine growing on it, and now you’ve got the urushiol toxin in your soil. Or a tree with allelopathic properties, like walnut, may have been chipped.
Overall, though, I’m a proponent of wood chips, and use them despite these risks. I believe the benefits outweigh the risks as long as you have the time to let them compost down before planting. They can be healing to soil after herbicides have been sprayed.
Daddio7 says
I was a cotton scout for a summer 20 years ago. One farmer had spiny pigweed in one field. He had to abandon that field because the pigweed crowded out the cotton and I was unable to scout it. It has one and half inch cactus like spines, you can not walk through it.
Donna says
I had the same problem with a big load of mulch I purchased. Being a new gardener, I thought I must be to blame for all the dying plants, until I realized that the area where the mulch had been dumped was not even growing weeds. Every bed, every plant I used it on died. I gathered and disposed of what I could, but even a year later I have a big sand patch where that mulch was dumped.
Amy says
Very sad!
Pamela says
My goodness, this was timely. I was about to mulch my 15 year old mixed home orchard of 2.5 acres with straw hay and horse manure for the first time. Was hoping to save on water use.
I am in Australia and did a search and yes Grazon is used out here.
For some time now I was wondering why my plants which I raise in pots before planting out into the house gardens were really acting up. Have not had a decent home grown tomato in about 5 years.
I bought all my compost and potting mix in cheaply. Cannot see me buying lucerne or pea straw out here for mulching as it hugely expensive.
Back to the drawing board!
Amy says
It is all very frustrating. I feel like a basic right has been taken away from us.
Pa says
Thank you for this great and timely information for those of us ready to start the fall gardens in the deep South.
Ardith Hale says
Thank you for the alert & for mentioning that beans will sound the alarm. I was just preparing to load my raised beds with soil & bagged manure. Now i will plant some beans inthemanure first to see if they grow well. Now what to do with the hay from the backyard chicken run. I normally add hay during the rainy season to keep the mud, smell & flies at a minimum. We use it about twice a year to mulch around our fruit trees. I guess i will have to find a new source.
Sheila says
Sensationalized. Reads like a Fox News story or a piece by PETA. There are those of us who farm organically or naturally and who don’t use herbicides on our pastures, but this article lumps us all into one group. It’s damaging to those of us who put in the extra work and money to mechanically improve poor pastures rather than spraying.
Go ahead and buy manure from a local organic or natural farmer. I use my cows’ manure on my gardens all the time, because I know it’s good and clean and safe.
David The Good says
PETA and Fox should cover the issue as well.
Pamela Cooke says
Here in UK we had a problem with (probably) Aminopyralid on our allotment site a few years ago. Fortunately it was not too severe but it has made me very cautious about the horse manure which we get for free. It is very strawy and I am only using it on pathways to keep down weeds, I watch carefully for any distorted growth on the adjacent plants. Farmers here are not supposed to let contaminated hay or manure get into the food chain, but who knows? I am told straw should be OK as it is from grain destined for human consumption. I have had disastrous results using potting soil containing recycled green waste, presumably because weedkiller was present on grass etc sent for recycling. I believe Chlorpyralid is a very common weedkiller for gardeners and related to Aminopyralid. How difficult it is becoming to grow healthy food!
Amy says
It’s important to ask the farmers you intend to buy from about their practices. Do they bale their own hay and straw? If so, is it sprayed? If they outsource it, can they find out for you? (If they outsource it, I would be cautious.) If it is a farmer doing good, then it’s important to continue supporting them.
Glow says
A similar thing happened to me with purchased potting mix that had manure in it and was labelled organic! I had yellow, curling leaves on houseplants after transplanting them in the new mix. The plants had been perfectly healthy before that. When I contacted the company about it, they swore it was not their mix, but I had changed nothing else, and the symptoms were consistent across several unrelated species of plants. I lost house plants and culinary and medicinal herbs.
On researching, I discovered that the organic standards do not regulate potting mix ingredients and the manure does not have to be from organically raised cows. It can still be labelled organic. Another company in my area (not the one I had purchased previously) is selling a mix labelled organic that lists “polymer” as one of the ingredients. This is essentially plastic or something similar. Hardly organic, but they USDA rules allow them to get away with this. The buyer definitely needs to beware, or simply not buy.
Amy says
The labeling on bagged organic materials is a racket. They are taking advantage of the fact that the “Organic” with a capital “O” (certified) is similar to organic (lower o) materials that are biodegradable materials from the earth. Of course, anything derived from fossil fuels is considered organic material, so you can see where the two can be confused and misused.
Note: I compared ‘Organic’ to ‘organic’ here to make a distinction. In real life, both definitions of the term can be referred to as organic, so it’s confusing and often purposefully so.
Look for products that have the OMRI label to be sure it is Organic certified. That’s a good first step. But I don’t believe organic certification has fully caught up to the mess we’re in with herbicide contamination.
If you’re working with a local farmer, start a conversation. Ask questions. Ask follow-up questions. Make sure s/he is the source of materials and they follow honest practices. It’s important that if they ARE doing the right things, that they are supported and honored for their work.
Margaret Mills says
I’m so glad to see this article. I had the problem with potatoes, sunflowers and tomatoes in about 2010. Through much research and then bio-assay tests using peas I realized my problem was the persistent herbicides. I’ve tried sharing my experience but have been met with so much resistance that I’m about to give up. This isn’t a sensationalized piece of information or fake news.
Thanks for your articles! People please research “persistent herbicides”.
David The Good says
Thank you, Margaret. I’m sorry to hear about your problem. Don’t give up.
Cindi O says
Oh my goodness! This article explains exactly why I lost thousands of plants. Food gardens, orchids and ornamentals. I bought several bags of composted cow manure and spread it in my gardens. I also made compost tea from the purchased compost. EVERYTHING I watered and the compost touched died. Years later nothing would grow in my garden beds, Not even weeds. I gave up gardening and moved. Now I understand just what happened. Thanks for the information!
Suzanne says
What about Roundup?
Laurie says
I bought some straw bales because I was thinking about trying Straw Bale Gardening. Right after having the straw delivered I read that they needed to be poison free in order to grow and for us to eat the products of our garden. So I thought I had better to make sure this wasn’t straw that had been poisoned…it had been. So I just left it were it had been stacked, in front of my Blue Atlas Cedar tree. I had planted this beautiful ornamental tree 11 years earlier. It had taken off loving where it was living and growing tremendously each year. But during mid summer that year it dropped ALL of it’s needles. I was shocked and couldn’t figure out why. I kept on watering it-we live where it’s dry in the summer- and remembered reading somewhere to give a tree three years to re-coup. The next year it sat needle-less, although towards the end of that summer I spotted a tiny bit of growth at the top. The next year it returned with needles that were truncated and with normal straight growth of branches but smaller than normal.The following year the needles and branches look almost normal. I now understand why-I’m sure that straw shed off its poison and poisoned my tree. Now I’m thinking the straw had probably been poisoned. This article also brings up the fact of not using manure from your very own animals who have been fed commercially grown hay=ALL of my animals. Shoot! This is a horrible poison!!! I’m also thinking/questioning: If animals have been fed this poison through their hay, and then butchered for consumption you know they have to have this poison within their meat=we are consuming=upper carnivore=much higher rate of poison for us?!!! Holy smokes! Even those of us trying to modify our diets via raising our own foods in order to eat healthier are still not achieving this. Sigh.
Amy says
It is scary and disheartening to think about the ramifications of these poisons, isn’t it? You are so right about the animals raised for food. Please update us if you locate organic hay or find an alternative to hay for livestock.