Dung Beetles, really?

Courier Column for 16 January

The Beetle That Saves Us From Ordure

Here’s a health warning.  This column is going to be about intestinal worms and dung beetles. So if you are of a particularly sensitive disposition you may want to look away now. But here’s another warning, if you do, you’ll miss an extraordinary tale of nature resplendent.

To begin at the beginning. The sheep are back in the orchard. I couldn’t quite understand why they’d been away so long--nearly a year. When I spoke to the farmer, I discovered it’s all about the worms to which sheep are particularly susceptible. Ordinary flocks are simply treated with chemical drenches on a regular basis. Organic farmers, though, have regularly to rotate their sheep pasture and, if the worms still take hold, keep them off the land for up to twelve months.

If you bring in cattle, they eat the grass too close for the worms to survive. But, in our orchard, they’d also eat or knock over the trees. The Soil Association does allow infrequent use of certain chemical wormers but our farmer told me he doesn’t hold with them: “Kills the dung beetles, doesn’t it.” 

I looked at him blankly: “Erm, isn’t that a good thing?” The expression on his face was one to behold--a cross between amazement that anyone could have asked such a daft question and pity that someone could have reached my advanced years in a state of such ignorance.

After only a relatively short lecture, I was allowed to go away and look them up on the internet. First search elicited a site called ‘Dung Beetles Direct’ (honestly it’s true, try it yourself). It informs you that Britain has more than 40 species of “these all important insects” which decompose animal dung.  And is that so vital? Apparently yes. An average sheep produces 800 kg a year and a single cow up to nine tons! Without the beetle to break it down, feed on it, or bury it deep underground, we could lose nearly 5% of all permanent pasture-- and that’s equivalent to an area the size of London. So the dung beetle effectively prevents us from drowning in animal poo. But, and here’s the rub, dung beetles are on the decline. Livestock wormers and other parasiticides are highly toxic to them so you seldom find them on pasture where sheep drench has been used.  Which is yet another good reason to insist on organic!