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Dung beetles - for birds, bats and happy cows!
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it!
Dung beetles are one of the unsung heroes of nature friendly farming. Small but mighty!
The dung beetles of the uk may not have the glamour of the African beetles, no elephant poo to roll here, but they do a a important job on our land and so we support them all we can. They find the dung our livestock leave behind them, flying in and quickly burrowing into it, then they get to work. Some of the beetles are small, they tend to live in the dung, making tunnels through it, drying it out so it crumbles and easily adds a nutritious ‘top dressing’ for the soil. Others burrow into the soil under the dung, sometimes making tunnels a metre deep, where they bury lumps of dung for their larvae to eat, safe from the birds.
The use of modern farm chemicals, especially wormers, has had a devastating effect on the dung beetles. Insecticides go through the livestock and either kill or harm the insects that land on the dung. Because of this we only ever use wormers when absolutely necessary, never treating all the animals just because it’s the traditional time of year to do so. Because of this we have a lot of dung beetles, and they not only help clean and fertilise the pasture, they also are a very important food source for the many birds, bats and mamels that eat them. One of the joys of the farm is watching, at dusk, the swallows, swifts and bats all fly above the pastures feasting on the beetles.
A recent study on Dartmoor by the foundation for common land showed that the best farming systems can support millions of beetles a month! A single sheep on the moor, if not unnecessarily wormed, could be supporting 10,500 dung beetles a month!
That’s a lot of food for the birds and the bats!
the study can be found here https://foundationforcommonland.org.uk/library/dartmoor-dung-beetle-survey-2024
if you want to know more about dung beetles then the organisation Dung Beetles for Farmers has lots of information
https://www.dungbeetlesforfarmers.co.uk/
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it!
Dung beetles are one of the unsung heroes of nature friendly farming. Small but mighty!
The dung beetles of the uk may not have the glamour of the African beetles, no elephant poo to roll here, but they do a a important job on our land and so we support them all we can. They find the dung our livestock leave behind them, flying in and quickly burrowing into it, then they get to work. Some of the beetles are small, they tend to live in the dung, making tunnels through it, drying it out so it crumbles and easily adds a nutritious ‘top dressing’ for the soil. Others burrow into the soil under the dung, sometimes making tunnels a metre deep, where they bury lumps of dung for their larvae to eat, safe from the birds.
The use of modern farm chemicals, especially wormers, has had a devastating effect on the dung beetles. Insecticides go through the livestock and either kill or harm the insects that land on the dung. Because of this we only ever use wormers when absolutely necessary, never treating all the animals just because it’s the traditional time of year to do so. Because of this we have a lot of dung beetles, and they not only help clean and fertilise the pasture, they also are a very important food source for the many birds, bats and mamels that eat them. One of the joys of the farm is watching, at dusk, the swallows, swifts and bats all fly above the pastures feasting on the beetles.
A recent study on Dartmoor by the foundation for common land showed that the best farming systems can support millions of beetles a month! A single sheep on the moor, if not unnecessarily wormed, could be supporting 10,500 dung beetles a month!
That’s a lot of food for the birds and the bats!
the study can be found here https://foundationforcommonland.org.uk/library/dartmoor-dung-beetle-survey-2024
if you want to know more about dung beetles then the organisation Dung Beetles for Farmers has lots of information
https://www.dungbeetlesforfarmers.co.uk/
A large dung beetle on a hand.
The importance of scruffy farms. Part 1. Goldfinches.
We didn’t mean to have a messy farm. We thought for a long time that we could tame it, get the fields tidy and the weeds under control. The walls up and the logs neatly stacked. We battled. Days cutting weeds back, chemicals and fertilisers used and still we got nowhere. We had old photos of the land looking neat, but without an army of helpers we just couldn’t manage it. Just two people on land too steep for tractors we were defeated. We had to let something go.
The first thing we stopped cutting back were the marsh thistles. They grow in our wet Rhos meadows, tall and beautiful, but to a farmers eye worse than useless. Not a thing the cows can eat and they set seed easily all over the place, spreading spikes. We have cut them back year after year before flowering, failing to get to them all, until we realised we couldn’t do everything and just gave up.
And then we started to see more Goldfinches.
Hanging upside down on a winter frosted dead thistle, flying up from the marsh ground, flitting in small groups from hedge to thistle and back, they made themselves known. One, then a few, then charms of 20, 30, more. Like magic they appeared. We may have always had them in number and not noticed, but once we started noticing them cutting their food down seemed mean.
We also noticed that the thistles didn’t bother the cows, bore did they take over every inch of the place. So we decided to just cut the marsh thistles if they took over open pasture and relaxed a bit.
The Goldfinches rise on mass sometimes, a charm of 50 birds flying overhead to glean thistle seeds from the meadows. It’s worth being a bit scruffy just to hear them sing.
We didn’t mean to have a messy farm. We thought for a long time that we could tame it, get the fields tidy and the weeds under control. The walls up and the logs neatly stacked. We battled. Days cutting weeds back, chemicals and fertilisers used and still we got nowhere. We had old photos of the land looking neat, but without an army of helpers we just couldn’t manage it. Just two people on land too steep for tractors we were defeated. We had to let something go.
The first thing we stopped cutting back were the marsh thistles. They grow in our wet Rhos meadows, tall and beautiful, but to a farmers eye worse than useless. Not a thing the cows can eat and they set seed easily all over the place, spreading spikes. We have cut them back year after year before flowering, failing to get to them all, until we realised we couldn’t do everything and just gave up.
And then we started to see more Goldfinches.
Hanging upside down on a winter frosted dead thistle, flying up from the marsh ground, flitting in small groups from hedge to thistle and back, they made themselves known. One, then a few, then charms of 20, 30, more. Like magic they appeared. We may have always had them in number and not noticed, but once we started noticing them cutting their food down seemed mean.
We also noticed that the thistles didn’t bother the cows, bore did they take over every inch of the place. So we decided to just cut the marsh thistles if they took over open pasture and relaxed a bit.
The Goldfinches rise on mass sometimes, a charm of 50 birds flying overhead to glean thistle seeds from the meadows. It’s worth being a bit scruffy just to hear them sing.
