With farmers being challenged to find more sustainable and environmentally friendly methods of farming, we are seeing a few purchases of Dung Beetles by our clients.

When we first saw these going through the bank statements, there was some confusion amongst the team about why a dairy farmer in Hawera was buying dung beetles. We had an educational phone call with the client, and since then, we have seen more farmers buying dung beetles. These are being used as a natural sustainable solution to revitalise our soils, pastures, and to improve water quality by reducing surface run-off.

Although we have dung beetles in New Zealand, they are forest dwelling species that are not suitable for dairy farming. Instead, non-invasive pastoral species are now being imported from overseas. The varieties being imported into New Zealand are the tunnelling variety. They make tunnels under piles of manure and create dung rolls that they bulldoze down into these tunnels. These tunnels are usually around 30–40 cm in depth but can be over a metre deep, depending on the species.

They are hard workers; a single dung beetle can bury 250 times its own body weight overnight. They do this to store the dung balls for their young to eat. The young dung beetles only eat about a third of a dung ball. The young develop into new beetles between 6 weeks and 1 year old, depending on the species.

Some of the benefits to the farmer are:

• greater pasture productivity – as dung patches are broken down, cows can fully graze paddocks instead of leaving the area around and under dung patches
• improved soil structure and health
• organic carbon capture
• reduction in risk of run-off from paddocks into waterways
• improved water quality and healthier waterways
• recycling of nutrients quickly back into the soil
• improved plant nitrogen content, protein levels and height

The cost of dung beetles for a 2,000 su or 300 cow farm is likely to be around $6,600 plus GST. This gives the farmer a pack of 4 colonies of different species to place around the farm.

We have been coding this to ‘Pasture Maintenance’ as the main purpose is to improve pasture quality. This is a great example of farmers using a natural solution to tackle environmental issues.