DAIRY NEWS AUSTRALIA OCTOBER 2020
12 // NEWS
Dung beetle trial on a roll DANEKA HILL
A SOUTH Australian experiment is firing up after
10 Goulburn Valley farms opted into the project. This is the first time the project – which measures the benefits of feeding biochar to livestock and introducing dung beetles – has been trialled outside SA’s Fleurieu Peninsula. Stanhope dairy farmer Craig Emmett received his dung beetles on September 17 and will begin feeding out biochar in the near future. “I’ve gotten a dung beetle called O. vacca which is a high-rainfall type and they’ll be going on the irrigation paddocks,” Mr Emmett said. “The idea is to feed the cows the biochar and when it comes out in the manure the beetles bury all the nutrients into the soil.” All 10 farms are receiving dung beetles while three are trialling biochar (a biomass and charcoal blend) as a feed supplement. The dual use of biochar and dung beetles has been observed to improve pasture dry matter by 30 per cent, increase water retention and lift milk yields. Goolwa beef farmer Melissa Rebbeck is the woman behind the project. Since 2015, Ms Rebbeck has been involved with biochar and has facilitated several trials as the director of her company Climate and Agricultural Support.
In one trial a SA dairy farm recorded their average cow’s daily milk yield increased by 1.4 litres after introducing biochar. “For that 250-cow farm that means a $70,000 increase in yearly profit,” Ms Rebbeck said. She said for every $800/tonne of biochar used she had recorded a net user benefit of $5000. “And that’s just measuring the milk yield increase not the improvement to pasture biomass, soil health and better feed conversation ratio, and similar.” Currently all biochar for the project is being provided by Mara Seeds in NSW. The Goulburn Valley in northern Victoria was selected as the project’s breakout test site because of Katunga dairy farmer Paul Stammers, who heard Ms Rebbeck on ABC Radio. Mr Stammers got in contact with Ms Rebbeck to say he’d purchased biochar to trial, drawing her interest to his farm and others in the region. Since then Ms Rebbeck has partnered with Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority and Goulburn Murray Landcare to engage with local farmers. “We’ve done the trials and technical reports over here (SA), and now we need to demonstrate it can work in other regions,” Ms Rebbeck said. All Goulburn Valley farmers will keep their beetles in a specially designed nursery for the
next 12 months, blowing their 50- to 100-strong populations out to 3000 or 15,000 depending on the species. The use of a nursery stage is a new method and is expected to streamline the establishment of the species. The dung beetles are provided by land rehabilitation organisation Creation Care. Creation Care owner Greg Dalton said the Goulburn Valley project had multiple “really exciting” features. The two dung beetle species involved – B. bubalus and O. vacca – are new spring-active types and not yet established in any of Australia’s agricultural regions. “Most introduced dung beetles in Australia are only active in summer or winter,” Mr Dalton said. “But most pasture growth happens in spring. It creates what we call the spring gap.” It is hoped the beetles will adapt to Goulburn Valley soils and work with other species in the area to create a year-round workforce, burying nutritional and carbon-rich manure up to 40cm into the ground. Added benefits include reducing fly numbers and the fire fuel load. “Soil carbon is the most important thing for Australian soils,” Mr Dalton said. “And I can confidently say this is the biggest carbon sequestration project in Australia … each
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Greg Dalton with some Bubas bubalus dung beetles - a late winter to mid-summer active species from southern Europe.
cow produces 7.2 tonnes of manure per year, and if you have year-round beetle activity they will bury 80 per cent of that.” Australia has more than 500 species of native dung beetle which don’t interact with livestock manure and 23 introduced species.
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