1. Tibetan sheep (Ovis aries) and plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) excrements are important organic materials that influence soil carbon cycling in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. However, their exact priming effects (PE) on soil and mechanisms of influence in alpine meadows are subject to their health status. 2. To fill this knowledge gap, we carried out a 45-day incubation experiment using alpine meadow soils with differing degrees of degradation that had been enriched with these two types of excrement. Soil PE was assessed via the natural abundance method, while soil microbial communities and their compositions were examined through high-throughput sequencing. 3. The findings indicated that severely degraded soils are more susceptible to soil PEs than non-degraded soils (p < 0.05). Both types of excrement supplements modified the structure and composition of the soil microbial communities. Specifically, heavily degraded meadow soils displayed a significantly higher MBC:MBN ratio, reduced soil bacterial α-diversity, and notable shifts in the composition and β-diversity than the intact meadow soil. 4. Both excrement supplements demonstrated a direct negative correlation (r = -0.94) with key soil microbial taxa, namely Actinobacteriota (r = 0.21), Proteobacteria (r = 0.29) and Chloroflexi (r = 0.22), and showed direct positive correlations. The soil C:N ratio positively impacted Proteobacteria (r = 0.39), whereas the soil NO3–N:NH4+-N ratio negatively affected Actinobacteriota (r = -0.18), thereby influencing soil PE. Therefore, alpine meadow degradation indirectly modulated soil PE by altering key microbial taxa such as Actinobacteriota (r = 0.70), Proteobacteria (r = -0.52), and the soil C:N ratio (r = -0.26).