Dung Beetles Aid in Pasture Health

Montana State University Professor and Extension Forage Specialist, Hayes Goosey says that there are a whole host of insects that are beneficial to cropping systems, including dung beetles.

“I always call them the free farm workers because their job is to process manure and there's different species. There's three different types of these, there's those that actually live in the dung Pat, there's those that tunnel below the dung Pat and bring the manure with it into the soil. And then there's another as that are called rollers which carve off a ball of manure and they'll roll that away and then bury that underground.”

When dung beetles movement or below the soil surface he says there's a lot of benefits for grazing ground how it moves manure below the soil surface what goes with that is a lot of NP and K that's in the manure itself sulfur, organic matter and you also reduce pat smother on the fields and on the range pat smother being a product or a manure path that sits grasses don't grow.”

Goosey says the average time for a manure pad to sit on the field is three years, dung beetles can reduce that time to about a year and a half- thus keeping those areas of the pasture producing again quicker Goosey made note that he and other extension specialists at Montana State are recommending that livestock producers do their cattle deworming during the winter so that it is processed and out of the animals by spring when a dung beetles start to become active.