The average cow will drop between 10 and 12 pads of about one litre of dung covering 0.82 square metres every day – and each one has the capacity to produce up to 3,000 flies within a fortnight.
Besides facilitating the excessive and unnatural abundance of bush flies in Australian farmland, large volumes of dung left unburied and unprocessed can remain for up to four years – its natural fertilisers locked up inside forever and wasted, or ending up in nearby waterways. Cattle will not graze near their own faeces, and accumulated dung can prevent the growth of vegetation, so large areas of dung-covered pasture can remain ungrazed for up to two years. Combined with the damage caused by large numbers of parasitic flies, this costs the cattle industry hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
The introduction of cattle to Australia with European settlement has brought with it the significant challenge of managing the accumulation of dung, because while we have around 400 species of native dung beetle, they are used to breaking down the dry, fibrous and pelletised droppings of marsupials such as kangaroos, wallabies and wombats. They can’t cope with the enormous volumes of dung produced by introduced livestock each day, so between 1969 and 1987, and again from 1990 to 1992, scientists from the national Australian science agency, the CSIRO, shipped in a range of exotic dung beetle species to address this problem. More recently, CSIRO scientists led by entomologists Jane Wright and Keith Wardhaugh, have introduced two species of European dung beetle to “finish the job”, according to a report released on the May 31 this year.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/online/5803/on-a-roll
The average cow will drop between 10 and 12 pads of about one litre of dung covering 0.82 square metres every day – and each one has the capacity to produce up to 3,000 flies within a fortnight.
Can you imagine the size of a dinosaurs, If there would not be any beetles , they would crap themselves to extinction.
Besides facilitating the excessive and unnatural abundance of bush flies in Australian farmland, large volumes of dung left unburied and unprocessed can remain for up to four years – its natural fertilisers locked up inside forever and wasted, or ending up in nearby waterways. Cattle will not graze near their own faeces, and accumulated dung can prevent the growth of vegetation, so large areas of dung-covered pasture can remain ungrazed for up to two years. Combined with the damage caused by large numbers of parasitic flies, this costs the cattle industry hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
The introduction of cattle to Australia with European settlement has brought with it the significant challenge of managing the accumulation of dung, because while we have around 400 species of native dung beetle, they are used to breaking down the dry, fibrous and pelletised droppings of marsupials such as kangaroos, wallabies and wombats. They can’t cope with the enormous volumes of dung produced by introduced livestock each day, so between 1969 and 1987, and again from 1990 to 1992, scientists from the national Australian science agency, the CSIRO, shipped in a range of exotic dung beetle species to address this problem. More recently, CSIRO scientists led by entomologists Jane Wright and Keith Wardhaugh, have introduced two species of European dung beetle to “finish the job”, according to a report released on the May 31 this year.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/online/5803/on-a-roll
The average cow will drop between 10 and 12 pads of about one litre of dung covering 0.82 square metres every day – and each one has the capacity to produce up to 3,000 flies within a fortnight.
Can you imagine the size of a dinosaurs, If there would not be any beetles , they would crap themselves to extinction.
