Stick with me on this. It's interesting .....

A horse needs about a half hectare of grass to feed itself all year round. I have one hectare for my two ponies. Each pony eats about 2-3.5% of it's bodyweight each day, depending on weather, workload, age, etc. It's a high fibre diet that produces about 50% (dry weight) of manure from the 100% eaten. Due to the high water content of the diet, real manure weight is often higher than what went in in the first place. Cattle eat roughly the same, about 2.5%.

Still with me? Good.

My pony Sovereign is 350kg. He poos out about 10kg of manure a day on his half of the hectare. That's 3650kg each year. Over 7000kg per hectare. Cattle weigh far more than Sovereign.

The UK Government has just passed a law saying landowners can't add more than 170kg of manure per year, per hectare. Even if I dry every last ball of crap straight out of the pony, he's still massively over that limit.

The law has just made all dairy farmers, horse owners, sheep farmers, pig farmers and chicken keepers criminals Even somebody walking their Jack Russell in a one acre back garden would go over that limit!

Is this government so stupid as to not think before passing a law? There simply isn't enough of the UK to spread all it's cattle muck on, given the number of cows we have here.

Maybe I've been told the new regulations wrong, but as they are from a DEFRA leaflet sent to all farmers that seems a long shot.

By the end of January next year, I'll be a law breaker.

Anyone know of any more impossible laws we live with here? If I'm going to jail at least let me be a repeat offender :