How to Burn Cow Manure

If wood isn't available when you need a fire, but cows are, you should consider burning cow manure. Cow droppings form into piles called cow chips or cow pies, and when these are completely dry they can be burned for fuel, as can buffalo manure. This is a time-honored tradition, one that helped the pioneers as they headed west in the 19th century. In "Our Ellsworth Ancestors," a journal entry is reproduced from a Mormon pioneer woman named Mary Ann Jones, who noted, “Some stomachs may reject a supper cooked with water taken from a buffalo wallow and on a fire of buffalo chips, but to us the food was good."

Things You'll Need

  • Work gloves
  • Dry cow manure
  • Dry grass
  • Matches
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Instructions

    • 1

      Put on your work gloves. Search for piles of cow manure in grassy meadows where cows have been grazing. Use your hands to collect as many pieces of dry cow manure as you want to burn. Stack the pieces in a pile in a wind-protected area. Break a cow chip in half to check its dryness. The cow pie will crumble to pieces if it's dry enough to burn,

    • 2

      Pull up dry grass to use as kindling. Find an area of bare ground and layer the grass 4 inches thick in a 2-foot-wide circle. Layer the dry cow chips 2 inches thick on top of the grass. Add another layer of grass, followed by another layer of cow chips. Continue adding layers of each until the fuel will create the size fire you want. Light the top layer of grass with matches, followed by the other layers in turn.

    • 3

      Fan the flames with your hand or blow on them to fuel the fire with more oxygen. Add cow chips to the fire as needed to keep it going. If the grass isn't igniting the cow pies, they may still be too wet. Since no two cow chips are the same, it's hard to calculate how long the manure will take to burn. You may need to continue gathering more cow chips to keep your fire going.