Published 16 December 2011

Do your kids like collecting bugs? Do you think they might like a chance at winning $100 these school holidays – doing just that?

Watershed Landcare are running a competition these holidays to see who can collect the most species of dung beetle from a single farm in the district. The competition is open to school kids of all ages who have access to a farm. Town and farm kids might like to team up for one farm and split the prize!

To get started, head to our dung beetle page and read the instructions on how to collect, package and post off dung beetles to a free identification service. All you need to do then is collect your beetles, post them off and wait for results. Once you’ve received your results, you can enter the competition! It’s as simple as that.

We’ve written a lot about dung beetles this year. Indeed the impact this little insect has on dung, soil carbon, fertility and rainfall penetration is far more significant than you could imagine. Dung can sit in the paddock for many years, losing precious nutrients to the atmosphere. But, with the help of these little creatures, dung can be buried in less than 48 hrs. Burying dung also reduces flies and parasites, reverses soil compaction, provides habitat and food for earthworms and unlocks phosphorus.

But why would you need a number of different species of dung beetle? Different species of dung beetles survive and spread in different habitats and climates, even operating at different times of the day; hence the need for more than one species to keep burying your valuable farm dung throughout the year.

According to Dung Beetle Guru John Feehan, finding out what species you have and haven’t got, and introducing species to ‘fill in the gaps’ is worth a thousand times more than a tonne of fertiliser. So put the kids to work these holidays and find out what you’ve got burrowing away in your paddocks, you might be surprised.

To read more about dung beetles and for competition details, check out our website: www.watershedlandcare.com.au

Also check out www.dungbeetle.com.au which has excellent information.

For a free Dung Beetle Resource Folder, log onto www.landcarevic.net.au/news/dung-beetle-resource-package they have 10 hard copies left (also available on DVD).