World Soil Day is a United Nations campaign held annually on 5th December to focus attention on the importance of healthy soil and to advocate for the sustainable management of soil resources.
Recently we hosted The Tove Valley Farmers Cluster Group with a talk from Sally-Ann Spence FRES FLS who is an entomologist specialising in dung beetles and pastureland ecology.
Sally-Ann farms her own cattle and sheep in Wiltshire and grew up on a conventional mixed farm in Suffolk. Sally-Ann is an Honorary Associate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and a founding member of both the Dung Beetle UK Mapping Project and Dung Beetles For Farmers advisory group. She has travelled extensively around the British Isles collecting dung beetle data and bases her research at her own centre facility on her farm.
You can find out more information on Sally-Ann and her work here www.Berrycrofthub.com and here www.dungbeetlesforfarmers.co.uk.
In UK, there are 60 species of dung beetle across three taxonomically distinct groups, these include:
Aphodiines (‘dwellers’)
Onthophagus (‘tunnellers’)
Geotrupes (‘tunnellers’)
Dung beetles are vitally important insects as they improve the quality and structure of soil, reduce parasite burdens in livestock and provide a variety of other crucial services within agricultural landscapes.
As Sally-Ann explains “different species of dung beetles prefer different decomposition stages of dung: some will fly in straight away on fresh dung whereas others prefer older dung. They also will prefer dung in different locations and soil types: some like dung in muddy poached areas, some the shadow of a hedge / trees. And finally, some dung beetles are specific to dung from certain species (sheep, cattle, horse etc). As well as those that are specialists, there are dung beetle species that are generalists, being less specific to dung age, location or the animal that produced it.”
The benefits that dung beetles provide include:
- reducing parasites and pest flies as parasites can’t continue their life cycles with the Dung Beetles breaking the dung down so quickly. There are also mites that live on the Dung Beetles that eat fly larvae.
- reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions. Dung ferments and produces methane for 72 hours, but Dung Beetles can stop or reduce that.
- carbon sequestration.
- increase Organic Matter and fertility.
- increase biodiversity for other animals as a food source.
Dung Beetles are under threat. The key factors include:
- livestock removal
- chemical management
- soil disturbance; ploughing, for example, is terrible for the dung beetle
- climate change
So, in order to look after and conserve our native breeds of dung beetle, we will try to adopt the following practice:
- only treat animals that have a parasite burden, and if so, know what parasite you are treating following a faecal egg survey
- use of quarantine pasture for animals having chemical treatment
- use alternative parasite control and work on factors including breeding, diet and environment
- use the shortest acting treatments possible
- weight each animal to ensure the correct dose is administered
Sally-Ann mentioned that estimating weights has time and again been proven to be highly inaccurate. If you keep underdosing then you’ll end up with resistance.
At Courteenhall we will work with our vet on faecal egg counts and blood tests, as Sally-Ann recommends blood tests semi-regularly and getting the vet to do faecal egg counts. Often this will save much more money than vet fees by reducing medication costs.
Sally-Ann also suggests mapping the egg results to get a parasite map of the grazing areas, which would further save on cost. That way we could work with our vet to have a parasite control plan.
Other measures could include adopting a breeding plan to increase the breed’s natural resistance in your herd. One way of doing this would be to check the medicine book when you buy an animal to see if it’s needed a lot of treatment and avoid it if it has.
If an animal has been treated, it should be kept off pasture for at least one week as the chemical will stay active and chemical could end up in the watercourse too.
Having multi-species can help. Cattle with a few sheep can be a good combination. Planting high fibre grasses and natural anti-parasitics such as chicory, sainfoin, plantain, birds foot trefoil.
Biosecurity is another consideration and Sally-Ann suggests that visitors should dip feet and park their vehicle well away from livestock.
From this fascinating visit we realise just how important Dung Beetles are to our farming practice. Sally-Ann told us that Dung Beetles are a keystone species and are vital both as a marker of and a tool to improve soil health and biodiversity, which is why we want to have a focus on them.
A really interesting map on dung beetles can be found here: www.dungbeetlemap.wordpress.com
