Best Friends Animal Society Creates a Successful Scenario with Compost
Jordan Moody is the Landscaping Manager at Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah. Best Friends is the largest animal sanctuary in the U.S., and the leading figure in the no-kill movement, with a mission to bring about a time when there are no more homeless pets.
Best Friends is impressive: it encompasses 5,900 acres in southern Utah’s canyonlands. On their facilities they care for a multitude of animals including between 50 to 80 adoptable horses. And they compost all herbivore manure and organic waste. And Moody is the one who makes that happen.
Moody arrived at Best Friends two years ago in 2022, ready to embark on a second career following one in law. His passion for soil biology was getting to him. “I read books and studied soil biology and ecosystems and how they work, including strategies for improving local ecosystems,” explains Moody.
He began at Best Friends with four large dumpsters full of horse manure slated for the landfill. “I came in and observed the local ecosystem here and saw sandy, bare soil that needed carbon. I wondered what we could do to repair it, to add carbon. And I saw that horse manure was going to the landfill.”
“I started with the idea of looking at ways to close loops in our local ecosystem,” begins Moody. “We pay for hay, horses munch it up, add good stuff to it, and then it goes to landfill. That’s an open loop and I wanted to close that loop. Now all the carbon brought in gets to stay and build the soil (as compost), and healthy soil becomes the foundation of a healthy ecosystem.”
Compost is a rich soil enhancement that improves the health of both plants and soil and helps to retain moisture, critical for a droughty area that averages 13.5 inches of precipitation per year. Moody accomplished this effort by coordinating with the different animal care areas at Best Friends. He got volunteers involved and set up designated drop-off areas to make it easy and chore-efficient for people to drop off organic waste.
In their composting process they take only herbivore manure: horses, potbelly pigs, goats, and bunnies. “We don’t use dog and cat manure because of the risks involved,” states Moody. Carnivores can share pathogens with humans so it’s safest to stick with manure from herbivores.
Moody uses a tractor to create separate piles of manures and stall waste. Piles are turned occasionally to add air and evenly mix materials, and they’re watered with sprinklers when dry. “You want your piles to be as damp as a wrung-out sponge; watering helps the microbial activity,” which is what is breaking down the compost into useful material for the soil and plants. “Turning and watering the piles is all we do.” In eight months, Moody goes from raw horse manure and bedding to finished compost.
The benefits of composting are many. It reduces the possibility of parasite reinfestation in animals since the heat generated during the composting process kills parasites, pathogens, and weed seeds. It reduces flies by eliminating their breeding ground. It reduces odors since a properly managed compost pile smells “earthy” and pleasant and not like fresh manure. The process of composting reduces the size of a pile by about 50%, so in the end you have less material to manage. And composting reduces the chances of manure-contaminated runoff from pens or manure stockpiles possibly polluting a stream or ground water. The end result is a valuable soil amendment.
At Best Friends, Moody uses the finished compost in landscaping projects around the property, in garden beds as well as in wildland restoration projects. They also use it in their greenhouses where they grow native plants from seed to use for projects. Moody has another use for finished compost. “We use it to make compost tea which allows us to get a lot of milage from the product.”
Best Friends has a cafeteria onsite and now Moody’s composting system uses kitchen scraps and coffee grounds from those areas as well. He also takes coffee grounds from other businesses.
“A lot of people have said they are happy about this (Best Friends composting),” says Moody. “It’s a common-ground topic: people love gardening and composting. The pieces were all there, someone just needed to spearhead the effort to close the loop,” Moody reflects. “It has been nice getting people involved from different backgrounds. The sanctuary is doing good things for all of us, in many ways.”
Check out the Horses for Clean Water website for information on upcoming events, online classes, private consultations, tip sheets, and other resources for horse keeping and land management. Visit the Sweet Pepper Ranch website for info on our horse motel or glamping tent.
See this article in the June 2025 Online Digital Edition:
June 2025
Alayne Blickle, a life-long equestrian and educator, is the creator/director of Horses for Clean Water, an award-winning, nationally acclaimed environmental education program that “wrote the book” on caring for horses and land. Known for her enthusiastic, fun and down-to-earth approach, she is an educator and photojournalist who has worked with horses and livestock owners for over 20 years. Alayne teaches and travels throughout North America and abroad, and also runs Sweet Pepper Ranch, an eco-sensitive guest ranch and horse motel in Southwestern Idaho where she and her husband raise top-notch reining horses and beautiful grass hay. For more information contact Alayne at [email protected] or 206-909-0225.