Dung Gone It

Let me preface this little essay by telling you a not-so-secret about myself. As anyone who’s known me for more than 20 minutes will tell you, I am a frustrated scientist. If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have gotten some kind of biology degree as my thirst for how the natural world works far exceeds the average person’s. We have a good friend who is a biologist by profession and I like nothing better than to pick his brain and share my theories on the life that surrounds us from the sheep to the fishes, insects to birds. I can’t say that he enjoys our exchanges as much as I do, but he tolerates me. Now on to my musing…

Having sheep around means you also have a fair amount of their dung as well. Surprisingly, sheep poop is not really smelly. It is their urine that can really reek when they are concentrated in one area. On the other hand, I am obsessed with raking up after them twice a day so that they have a nice clean corral area, so who knows what it would smell like if I were a little less OCD about sheep poop.

I have some help in their corral and pasture in the form of two innocuous insects, the yellow dung fly and a burrowing dung beetle.

Within a very short time after the sheep make a deposit, the fuzzy yellow flies arrive. They look like some kind of mutant cross between a pale bumble bee and a fly. Within minutes of their arrival they mate and lay their eggs. Three weeks later, adult flies emerge and continue the cycle. Apparently, the flies eat other insects and feed on nectar. I wonder if we can assume that the larvae eat dung? I haven’t seen larvae yet.

I don’t know when or how the dung beetles show up. As far as I can tell, they arrive by subterranean passages and go to work. I have found piles that the sheep deposit during the night that are nearly hollow shells by the time I get to them in the morning. I’ve never gotten a good look at one of the beetles as they scurry back into the soil as quickly as I expose them. I can tell you that they are small, about a quarter of an inch, shiny and incredibly voracious. What I can’t figure out is how they find the dung, or where they came from to start out with. The area where the sheep are only has had animals grazing on it the past couple of years, so I can’t imagine that there was a population of them just waiting around. Maybe they flew in? Regardless, they are welcome.

In fact as long as the critters who like dung leave us and the sheep alone, they are all welcome. Anything that minimizes the work I have to do to build our soils is a bonus and those things that enhance our efforts are invaluable.

Managing our farm in balance with nature is an ongoing and lifelong learning experience, one which I embrace as it tickles my scientific fancy. “Using” what Mother Nature provides is a heady responsibility. If we aren’t respectful of her gifts, the consequences can be messy and adverse to our human goals, and Mother Nature always wins. Anyone who thinks she doesn’t is a fool and headed for disaster. It’s a shame that our legislators and business leaders missed this day at life school. It is all of us that will suffer for their hubris.

We respectfully continue to do what we can here on our little farm with the help of sheep and dung eaters, bees and butterflies, bats and wild turkeys, and of course the fat robins, and the myriad of other creatures with which we are blessed.

Except the bald-faced hornets. In no way are they a blessing. Mother Nature can have them back.