Page 76 - Shorthorn Magazine

76
Shorthorn
CLAIRE WHITTLE
An ode to dung beetles and finding a wildlife haven on a Cumbrian Dairy Farm
Claire Whittle is The Regenerative Vet offering a bespoke, holistic Veterinary consultancy service to farmers transitioning towards agroecological practices. Whether she is advising on parasite control or the benefits of biodiversity for animal health, Claire advocates for healthy livestock as part of healthy farm ecosystems that benefit people and planet.
Since childhood I have been fascinated by nature. It was probably part of my decision to become a farm vet, getting to spend a lot of time outside. But it was the discovery in 2020 that we had dung beetles in the UK after reading Isabella Tree’s Wilding - The Return of Nature to a British Farm that I began to think of veterinary practice differently. Not only was I surprised to discover we have dung beetles, but I was also troubled to find out that the worming products I prescribe to livestock can have devastating impacts on them. From lethal effects, killing them outright to sublethal in smaller doses, affecting their ability to reproduce amongst other issues. It was likely that in prescribing these products I was contributing to their downfall within populations that were already struggling. Of over 60 types of dung beetle in the UK, half are considered endangered or nationally scarce.
I had no idea.
Why had nobody ever told me this? It didn’t feature in the parasitology lectures at university nearly a decade earlier. It had never been mentioned by the pharmaceutical companies who
manufacture the drugs and even more interestingly, in my then 6 years as a vet, across 3 practices, none of the other vets had mentioned them either.
I began to look for more information - and despite the fact there were many papers on the effects of mainly avermectins, (Macrocyclic Lactone or Clear wormer products) on dung beetles - there was not much information on what we as vets were able to do to mitigate these impacts. After posting about my newly-acquired knowledge on X (formerly known as Twitter) I was contacted by James Allen, a beef and sheep farmer. James had a plan. And he was looking for a vet....
James, who had discovered dung beetles at a workshop run by Entomologist Sally-Ann Spence had reached the same conclusion as I - that there was not enough information easily available to farmers or vets on how to protect dung beetles. So he had joined forces with Sally- Ann, Bruce Thompson - an Irish Dairy Farmer and Nuffield scholar whose report looked into the environmental benefits of dung beetles and Max Anderson, a PHD student looking from the University of Sussex. Between them they were creating ‘Dung Beetles for Farmers’, an online resource designed to improve the conservation status of dung beetles across the UK by providing pragmatic and evidence-based information to land and livestock managers. My role would be to provide veterinary input to enable farmers to manage their livestock in a dung beetle friendly way. Bingo!
So in 2021, during lockdown - www. dungbeetlesforfarmers.co.uk was launched. And the response has been phenomenal. It seems that people are as fascinated by these tiny but mighty ecosystem engineers as much as I. Dung beetles provide huge benefits including natural parasite control in our cattle. In drinking the liquid portion of cow pats, they dry it out and render the
environment unsuitable for parasitic worms to complete their lifecycles. One study shows they can reduce worm burdens on pasture by up to 30%! They also have a symbiotic relationship with another insect - phoretic mites. These tiny mites do not fly themselves but use dung beetles as aeroplanes to fly from pat to pat. As predators, these tiny mites then consume other things within a cow pat including those parasites that affect livestock such as nuisance fly larvae. How incredible is that?
They also have huge environmental benefits. They have been shown to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve water infiltration and nutrient cycling, soil aeration and even sequester carbon as the tunnelling beetles pull the organic matter of a cow pat underground into which they lay their eggs and in doing so, reduce pasture fouling. They are also a vital food source for other creatures. Our wading birds - Lapwing, Godwit and Redshank have all had dung beetle wing casings found in their faeces. There are larger populations of Greater Horseshoe bats when livestock are found within 4km of their nesting sites. They rely on species of dung beetle that fly at dusk to feed their young, even owls have been known to eat them. But most of all, they demonstrate so importantly why livestock are an integral part of our landscapes, not only for the food and fibre they provide for us but also for all