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French dung beetles being bred for Australian soil

Scientists in Canberra are making artificial dung balls to breed two types of French dung beetle which can break down cow pats in southern Australia.

Unlike native Australian dung beetles, the bubas and vacca species, which were imported from France last year, like to eat cow poo.

Doctor Jane Wright, from the Ecosystems Sciences division of CSIRO, says researchers have already made 7,000 dung balls for the breeding program.

"That requires that we take nice, quality dung from the spring, squeeze the extra juice out of it to get it down to the right moisture content and try and make it into a ball," she said.

"And then we make a hole, put the egg in, close it up and eventually we get adults at the other end."

The dung beetles are due to be released onto Australian soils in spring next year.

According to Dr Wright, they require plenty of care and attention during the breeding process.

So far the smaller beetle, vacca, has been the most successful.

Dr Wright said it's important to make sure the beetles are given the right sort of dung to work with.

"The best dung is what's dropped in spring because that's when the cattle have been feeding on lovely green grass," she said.

"And what we do is we go out into the paddock and we find dung pads that have been laid or dropped in the last 12 hours, so they still are very soft and they don't have a crust on them yet and they haven't been well colonised by other dung beetles or any other thing like flies."

"And then we very carefully scrape that dung onto a little tray, making sure we don't get any dirt from underneath, and then we put that in garbage bins and bring it back to the lab, mix it all up, and then we freeze it in containers to be able to use any time later in the year."

Dr Wright says her team have collected about five tonnes of dung for the beetle breeding program already this year.

"We had about two and a half tonnes last year, but because our numbers are building up, we need more and more dung."

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