Several insights came from 80 survey responses and 12 interviews:
- The choice of bedding is influenced by a lot of factors. There is no universal bedding preference for all horse keepers.
- The bedding used does not hinder most farmers from using the horse manure, as they often compost the manure before use.
- Finding a farmer to take the manure is not always easy, but it is the most common use for the manure. There is no common way for farmers and horse keepers to get in contact. Not being able to connect is an issue from both sides, an issue that a dedicated forum might solve.
- Horse manure ends up in the forests in the far north of Sweden, due to a lack of a solution that is economically and sustainably viable. There is also a risk that the manure stays on oversized manure plates for over 10 years, possibly because it costs to find someone to take it.
- Horse manure is sought after by garden owners, and most garden owners said that it works well in their garden. Some horse keepers have been paid by garden owners for their composted manure, and bedding free fresh manure.
- Biogas companies are looking into solid manure such as horse manure to extract biogas from. There is an option to invest in farm-based biogas facilities placed on the horse keeping facility.
Theoretical methods results:
- The optimisation model found no possible solution:
- Indicating that there is too much nutrients in the manure in Sweden compared to nutrient need of crops. There is at a minimum too much of one of the three calculated nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium).
- Biogas calculations resulted in that above 1 900 000 000 kWh/year could be gained through extracting all Sweden’s estimated horse manure for biogas, if straw bedding was used.
- Which means that biogas from horse manure, in theory, could cover 1.1% of Swedens’ energy need as of 2022.