Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne made the announcement March 17.

“Agriculture is without a doubt one of the most important and investable sectors in our economy,” said federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald in a news release.

“The pace of technological advancement we’ve seen across the industry in recent years has been impressive, and investments like this will continue to accelerate innovation.”

The federal cash is part of an $50 million equity commitment alongside Idealist Capital to support the next phase of Solugen’s growth and commercial expansion.

Solugen produces and commercializes Azogen, a fast-release liquid ammoniacal nitrogen fertilizer derived from hog manure.

The investment will allow Solugen to expand capacity at its existing plant in St-Patrice-de-Beaurivage, Que. and construct a second facility in the province.

Solugen was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Lévis, Que. Its Azogen is produced through a fully circular process. By converting manure into high-performance fertilizer, it reduces greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional fertilizers, the news release said.

The funding comes through the Canada Growth Fund, a $15 billion, arm’s length public investment vehicle launched by the federal government to attract private capital and invest in Canadian projects and businesses.

The post Federal government funds Quebec organic fertilizer company appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

“I was looking for a general book for the layperson,” explains Floate, a senior researcher at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research and Development Centre.

While he found bits of information scattered across various scientific journals, a one-stop-shop of relevant cattle dung insect information didn’t exist. Naturally, his goal was to create one.

During COVID, Floate had an opportunity to dedicate time toward creating and publishing a resource book. 

The guidebook features colour photographs and high-quality images and each fact source is carefully documented and cited. Floate says it’s personally fulfilling to read dung insect discovery work from 100 years ago and find a relevant use for it today.

“The guide was written with ranchers and producers in mind,” says Floate. With 1,000 printed copies quickly distributed worldwide and more than 4,500 online views in English and 2,500 views in French, the guidebook is proving to fill a gap.

Manure as an oasis

Much of Floate’s career has focused on cow dung pats, an ecosystem that often goes under the radar, yet a valuable component of the animal-plant-soil interface.

“A cow pie is like an oasis in a prairie desert,” Floate says. In an area that was bone dry before, suddenly you have a deposit that is 80 per cent water and rich in plant bacteria, he explains.

However, the presence (or absence) of dung insects will affect the efficiency of how cow patty components are recycled back into the land.

“From an applied perspective, if you have a cow pie that is dropped on the pasture, it immediately removes that surface amount available by grazing,” says Floate.

Cow Patty Critters states in Canada, approximately 110 million dung pats are deposited daily by cattle.

Without active dung insects, Floate explains that the nutrients from the patty will leach out into the surrounding soil, over-fertilizing nearby vegetation and leaving a “green halo” effect. The forage may look green and lush, but Floate says it is not very palatable to livestock initially, which can further remove additional grazing surface area.

“If you take (dung) insects out of the equation, in Alberta or Saskatchewan that pie could be there for years,” he says.

When dung insects are active, however, they will take nutrients that are trapped in the manure and return them to the land.

“When insects are present, they dig holes, form tunnels. They physically remove chunks of the dung pat to accelerate the process of dung degradation,” says Floate.

“Simply by digging those tunnels, dung insects improve the porosity for water infiltration and aeration. Plant roots find those tunnels and use them as channels,” he adds.

“In scattering the pie, there are over 300 species of insects that can be involved.”

Dung pat degradation also reduces the incidence of livestock nuisance fly species such as face flies, horn flies and stable flies that cause production losses and discomfort among beef cattle.

Horn flies, for example, can complete three or four generations in a growing season, Floate says. “A lot of dung insect activity can help reduce the impact of these pest species.”

Floate notes that dung insects also provide other valued ecosystem services including pollination and seed dispersal, and they are an important source of food for small mammals and grassland bird species.

Dung insect dynamics

Weather conditions dictate when a “skin” forms on the patty and which odours are released or masked.

“If it were a wet day, the crust would not form as quickly and odours would be released for a longer period of time, attracting more insects,” Floate says.

“When the cow pie is deposited, low humidity and high temperatures accelerate the formation of a crust on a fresh pie, almost like saran wrap,” says Floate. That crust will block insect-attracting odours.

“(Dung pats) are not static, they change almost by the minute,” says Floate.

The amount of soil disturbance also plays a role in supporting some dung insects over others.

Many dung insects in Canada were unintentionally introduced from Europe, says Floate. Native dung beetle rollers and tunnellers exist, but are more likely to be found on undisturbed pastures than tame fields that have seen lots of disturbance, he says.

“If the ground is disturbed on a regular basis, that will disrupt those species.”

In contrast, dung beetle “dweller” species are less affected by soil disturbance. “Dwellers fly in, lay their eggs in the cow pie, and emerge as a new adult.”

Livestock parasite control products are another factor influencing dung insect activity.

Floate suggests producers use a careful approach when applying parasite control products but he defers to producers to make a decision that works for them.

“Their decision affects their pocketbook. If cattle have to be treated for parasite control, do that,” he says, but suggests producers watch the timing and type of product.

“If you’re using a parasiticide, and are concerned about dung health community, some products have less of a (negative) effect than others,” Floate says. He recommends treating after early June, which is when dung beetle insects tend to lay their eggs.

Product selection is also important. Float says that some products, such as eprinomectin, release active ingredients that can suppress or nearly suppress dung insects over several months rather than weeks. “This will reduce dung insects for an entire season.”

Future fecal projects

For Floate, studying cow pie ecology requires a team approach and can answer some detailed questions.

Along with fellow researchers, a new project on the docket will assess the effect of chemical residues from a dung pat on the adjacent soil.

“The residue from the cow pie will leach into the soil and affect the organisms in the soil beneath the pie and the immediate proximity,” he says. “The range of effect is pretty localized, but it is still an effect.”

Floate also continues to look for feedback on Cow Patty Critters as he considers working on potential updates that include additional dung insect species prevalent across North America and into Mexico.

“I’ve been asked a lot of questions about dung insects over my career,” says Floate, adding that referring producers, students and fellow researchers to this made-in-Canada book gives him great satisfaction.

“This is the guide I wish I had when I started my career.”

Readers can download a copy of the guidebook by scanning the QR code included with this article. c

Tara Mulhern Davidson is a writer and a beef and forage consultant. She ranches with her family in southwestern Saskatchewan.

The post Cow patty critters: Understanding dung insects in your pasture appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

At the Saskatchewan Beef Industry Conference that took place in late January 2024 in Regina, Sask., Schoenau presented on research he’s done regarding precision manure management, which is getting the manure in the right place, at the right rate, at the right time and at the right balance. 

“When we think about manure, it’s really a very important, valuable resource,” Schoenau says. “And we want to… get the maximum agronomic and economic benefit out of there and at the same time, minimize the impact on water and air, we want to keep those nutrients in place.” 

Schoenau was involved with a research project through the Livestock and Forage Centre of Excellence regarding variable rate manure application. He says it was a five-year project with a four-year period of study that encompassed manure applications, comparing cattle manure with commercial fertilizer. 

The first manure application was in May 2019 and the second manure application was in April 2021. They set up treatment zones and identified three watersheds in each treatment zone. Schoenau says they didn’t apply manure in the watershed basins or where they could see there would be standing water for a time. 

Researchers applied commercial phosphorus to all the zones, including the manured zone. 

With a productivity map, they developed a simple prescription for the manure application. “Areas of low productivity, like those knolls, the hills, we put on more manure,” Schoenau says. “And in the depressional areas where fertility was high, we cut back the rate of the manure.” 

Overall there wasn’t a lot of change in the cumulative silage barley production between the variable rate manure zone, commercial fertilizer zone and the constant rate manure zone. Production from the commercial fertilizer was a bit higher statistically, but he says that’s because of phosphorus. 

“The phosphorus that was applied with commercial fertilizer, 100 per cent availability. Whereas in the case of the phosphorus in the manure, its availability is typically less than what we see for commercial fertilizer.” 

Schoenau says they found an elevated level of available nutrients in the soil after harvest in areas where commercial fertilizer and constant rate treatments were used, especially in depressions. 

He also says precision application reduces soil-soluble phosphorus in low spots. Because of this, there was less phosphorus in the runoff in the variable rate zone compared to the constant rate zone. 

Nitrous oxide emissions were higher where manure was applied because of the additional nitrogen. 

“In the large catchment areas that were wet, we saw that that variable rate decision application resulted in a significant reduction in nitrous oxide flux.” 

There was no significant effect of the manure on carbon dioxide emissions. 

He says another benefit they found from precision variable rate application was reduced E. coli entry into the water.

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Dr. Kevin Floate, an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientist at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, is on the case and has developed the first comprehensive guide to discover and understand the fecal friends that provide big bug benefits. 

Over 300 insect species are found in cow dung on Canadian pastures: mating, eating dung, laying eggs, eating each other — all while providing valuable ecosystem services. 

When Floate first started looking at this unique community of insects some 30 years ago, he was amazed by the abundance of life and activity he was witnessing. He quickly learned, however, that information on these critters was scattered across different scientific books and articles that were often hard to access, written in complex language and focused on only one or two insects. 

Cattle producers are in close contact with their pastures and see the impact that dung insects have on the land and their animals, but they haven’t had easy access to reference material until now. Given the number of questions Floate has received from folks over the years, he was inspired to write a comprehensive guide. 

Floate started to pull together information for a comprehensive but easy-to-understand guide to dung insects in Canada. Loaded with over 200 painstakingly sourced images, Cow Patty Critters: An Introduction to the Ecology, Biology and Identification of Insects in Cattle Dung on Canadian Pastures is a resource to understand the diversity of insects and the variety of activities they carry out in dung. 

The study of insects and other organisms in dung pats is not just about cataloguing their diversity. In his guide, Floate introduces the significance of these critters that hop, fly, squirm and dig. For example, through their tunnelling and feeding activities, these insects scatter dung to remove breeding sites for pestiferous flies that affect cattle and speed the return of nutrients to the soil. They can also aerate the soil and improve water drainage through their burying behaviours, disperse seeds and pollinate plants. Last, these insects consume and are consumed, feeding birds and small mammals higher up the food chain that rely on them for sustenance. For the rancher, land manager, naturalist or conservationist, dung insects are a surprising but valuable ally. 

The Cow Patty Critters guide is a dung detective’s handbook for studying cow dung communities on pastures across Canada. Floate says the best way to investigate dung insects is to start by observing them. As such, the second part of the Cow Patty Critters guide provides tools and instructions on how to identify dung insects and other critters. The guide includes coprophilous (dung-loving) organisms in four broad groupings: flies, beetles, wasps and mites. Profiles describe the biology for different members of each group in plain language, with high-resolution photographs and detailed references for further research. 

Ultimately, Dr. Floate’s hope is that having this reference freely available to the public will spur further research and interest from farmers, ranchers and students on this important and practical topic. Although specific to Canada, the guide can be used throughout North America and in Europe, where many of the dung insects now in North America originated. 

Cow Patty Critters highlights the valuable pasture ecosystem services and insights into animal health this often unsung community supplies and provides a foundation for future studies of our fecal friends.

The post Cow Patty Critters: A new guide on Canada’s fecal friends appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

The government said protocols for four other sectors including agriculture and forest management are now being developed. It will also start developing protocols for carbon capture technology, which Canada’s high-polluting oil industry is betting on to slash its emissions, this summer.

For agriculture, the federal offset protocols now under development for future launch include “enhanced soil organic carbon” and “livestock feed management.”

As those and other protocols are completed, work on protocols including “livestock manure management” and “anaerobic digestion” will begin, the government said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has pledged to cut climate-warming emissions 40-45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Greenhouse gas emissions from waste, including landfills, make up seven per cent of Canada’s total carbon output.

The greenhouse gas offset credit system is intended to support a domestic carbon offset trading market, and the government said it will create new economic opportunities for companies and municipalities reducing emissions.

Participants can register projects and generate one tradeable offset credit for each tonne of emissions reduced or removed from the atmosphere, providing their projects follow the federal offset protocols that set out exactly which activities are eligible.

Credits can then be sold to others, such as heavy industrial emitters obliged to limit carbon pollution, or to companies wanting to voluntarily offset their emissions.

“Starting with landfills, we’re putting in place a market-based mechanism to incentivize businesses and municipalities to invest in the technologies and innovations that cut pollution,” Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a statement.

Once adopted, the livestock feed management protocol will credit methane reductions from livestock, the government said, while the enhanced soil organic carbon protocol would allow eligible farmers to generate offset credits by adopting “sustainable agricultural land management activities.”

The exact ag practices that can be followed to generate offset credits are to be determined during the protocol development process, the government said. Public comment periods will take place for future draft protocols, and “technical expert teams” have been set up to advise on “the latest science.”

Farmers “have made significant gains in reducing the GHG emissions intensity of the sector in recent years,” Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said Wednesday in a statement. “We look forward to the development of specific details on how the agriculture sector can benefit under the federal offset credit system.”

The government expects the price of credits to broadly track Canada’s price on carbon — which is currently set at $50 a tonne and is scheduled to ramp up to $170 a tonne by 2030.

However, environmental groups warned allowing polluters to purchase offset credits instead of cutting their own emissions risked undermining climate goals.

“Offsetting doesn’t stop carbon from entering the atmosphere and warming our world, it just keeps it off the books of big polluters responsible,” said Greenpeace Canada spokesman Shane Moffatt.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nia Williams. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Now, facing a global shortage of commercial fertilizers made worse by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more U.S. growers are knocking on his door. Sandquist says they’re clamouring to get their hands on something Old MacDonald would swear by: old-fashioned animal manure.

“I wish we had more to sell,” said Sandquist, founder of Natural Fertilizer Services Inc., a nutrient management firm based in Iowa. “But there’s not enough to meet the demand.”

Some livestock and dairy farmers, including those who previously paid to have their animals’ waste removed, have found a fertile side business selling it to grain growers. Equipment firms that make honeywagons are also benefiting.

Not only are more U.S. farmers hunting manure supplies for this spring planting season, some cattle feeders that sell waste are sold out through the end of the year, according to industry consultant Allen Kampschnieder.

“Manure is absolutely a hot commodity,” said Kampschnieder, who works for Nebraska-based Nutrient Advisors. “We’ve got waiting lists.”

Sky-high prices for industrial fertilizer are projected to reduce American farmers’ corn and wheat plantings this spring, according to U.S. government data. That further threatens global food supplies as domestic wheat inventories are the lowest in 14 years, and the Russia-Ukraine war is disrupting grain shipments from those key suppliers.

While manure can replace some of the nutrient shortfall, it’s no panacea, agriculture specialists say. There’s not enough supply to swap out all the commercial fertilizer used in the U.S. Transporting it is expensive. And prices for animal waste, too, are rising on strong demand.

It’s also highly regulated by state and federal authorities, in part due to concerns about impacts on water systems.

Manure can cause serious problems if it contaminates nearby streams, lakes and groundwater, said Chris Jones, a research engineer and water quality expert at the University of Iowa.

Livestock farmers say it’s a heavy lift to meet all the government rules and track how manure is applied.

Race for waste

Regardless of the drawbacks, demand is booming.

In Wisconsin, three dairy farmers told Reuters they turned down requests to buy their manure sent via text and Twitter messages.

North Carolina-based Phinite, which makes manure-drying systems, says it’s fielding solicitations from growers as far away as Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and Indiana.

Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, has noticed the shift at the U.S. hog farms that supply its slaughterhouses.

“We’re definitely seeing farmers move toward manure with the increase in fertilizer prices,” said Jim Monroe, a spokesperson for the company, which is owned by Hong Kong-listed WH Group.

Industrial fertilizers such as nitrogen require a lot of energy to produce. Prices started to surge last year amid rising demand and lower supply as record natural gas and coal prices triggered output cuts by fertilizer manufacturers. Extreme weather and COVID-19 outbreaks also roiled global supply chains.

War in Ukraine has made the situation worse by reducing fertilizer exports from Russia and its ally Belarus due to Western sanctions and shipping snags. That threatens to shrink harvests around the world at a time of record food inflation. Combined, Russia and Belarus accounted for more than 40 per cent of global exports of potash last year, one of three critical nutrients used to boost crop yields, according to Dutch lender Rabobank.

As of March, commercial fertilizer prices reached a record high, with nitrogen fertilizer jumping four-fold since 2020 and phosphate and potash up three-fold, said London-based consultancy CRU Group.

One person left bereft is Dale Cramer, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on about 6,000 acres at Cambridge, Nebraska. Searching for alternatives, he has sniffed around feedlots for manure since last August with no luck.

“A lot of people have put their names in for the same thing,” Cramer said.

Honeywagon scramble

With demand for manure surging, prices have followed, delivering an unexpected windfall to livestock producers and cattle feedlots.

Prices for good-quality solid manure in Nebraska alone have reached $11 to $14 per ton, up from a typical price of $5 to $8 per ton, consultant Kampschnieder said (all figures US$). A dry winter helped drive up prices by leaving manure with less water in it, making it more concentrated, and thus more valuable, he said.

Iowa farmer Pat Reisinger is relieved he has dung from the pigs and dairy cows he raises to fertilize the corn, soybeans and hay he grows to feed those animals. He sold a little manure to one neighbor and is getting phone calls from others in need.

“If I sold any more, I’d have to turn around and buy commercial fertilizer, which makes no sense,” Reisinger said.

The boom has also has lifted machinery companies that make spreading equipment for solid manure as well as so-called honeywagons: wheeled tanks hitched to trucks and tractors for transporting and applying liquefied waste.

In Ontario, Husky Farm Equipment is sold out of honeywagons. The company built its first contraption back in 1960 as a way to make collecting and spreading manure more efficient, according to company president Walter Grose. Today Grose sells directly to farmers and machinery dealerships, and he can’t keep up.

“We have people looking for equipment right away and we’re sold out for six months,” said Grose who sells honeywagons in several sizes. Bigger tanks come with a $70,000 average price tag.

CNH, the American-Italian farm and construction equipment giant, said it has seen strong demand for its New Holland brand box spreaders — essentially, a steel box that attaches to a tractor to haul and spread solid manure.

Kansas equipment dealership KanEquip Inc. is sold out of New Holland spreaders, even though prices have jumped 10 per cent from the normal list price of $30,000, said regional manager Bryndon Meinhardt. He said the dealership has ordered 10 more to meet demand.

No poop for you

Even in states where large livestock herds generate massive quantities of manure, there’s not enough to replace commercial fertilizer completely. Iowa, the top U.S. producer of pork and corn, already applies all of its manure on land covering about 25 per cent of its corn acres each year, said Dan Andersen, an associate professor at Iowa State University who specializes in manure management.

On average, Iowa uses about 14 billion gallons of manure annually, said Andersen, known as @DrManure on Twitter. He expects Iowa growers may suck out an extra billion gallons this year from storage in tanks on farms to substitute pricey commercial fertilizer.

Part of the current supply problem is rooted in the evolution of the U.S. farm economy. As America’s livestock sector has consolidated, there are geographical hubs where animals are raised for eggs, milk or meat, and where the most manure is produced. As a result, some places have too little, while others have too much and have wrestled with ways to dispose of it.

Last October, Pennsylvania dairyman Brett Reinford thought he might be tight on manure storage space over the winter. So he made an offer to local farmers: You come and haul it away, you can have it for free. He got no takers.

Fast forward six months and Reinford is now sitting on liquid gold. “We’re keeping it all and I wish we had more,” he said.

Manure could become even more precious later this year, as U.S. livestock herds and poultry flocks shrink.

The number of hogs in the United States has dropped to its lowest level in about five years, as producers grapple with swine diseases and rising costs for feed and other inputs. Bird flu, meanwhile, has wiped out more than 22 million chickens and turkeys on commercial U.S. farms since February.

But even hard-hit poultry farmers could have something to use: Their dead birds can be composted and applied as fertilizer, according to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

— Reporting for Reuters by P.J. Huffstutter and Tom Polansek in Chicago and Bianca Flowers in Chicago and New York. Additional reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington, D.C.

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Though the winter nutrient ban has been lifted, the province cautioned producers to “assess current weather conditions and periodically check weather forecasts” if they’re applying anytime between now and April 11.

“Nutrients should not be applied in instances where the weather outlook is unfavourable,” the province said — for example, “a forecast of snow or an appreciable amount of rainfall that would result in runoff.”

All other manure management regulations are still in effect, the province added, such as the ban on applications on “sensitive lands along waterways” and on lands classified as Nutrient Management Zone N4.

Typically, the province’s ban on winter application of nitrogen and phosphorus, including manure, is in place between and including Nov. 10 of one year and April 10 the following year — with variances where conditions allow.

The regulation was put in place in 2008 as application of nutrients onto frozen or snow-covered soils “results in an increased risk of nutrient runoff” into Manitoba waterways, which in turn increases algal blooms in Lake Winnipeg and elsewhere. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Cattle manure is more than nutrients and water; it is teeming with insect life. “In the southern Prairies in Canada, you might find three hundred species of insects present in dung,” says Dr. Kevin Floate, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada based out of the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre.

“Only some of those beetles are what we call dung beetles,” he explains, adding that dung beetles specifically feed on plant fibre in the dung. His lab is looking at how beef production practices affect dung beetle populations and their ability to do the dirty work that nature requires.

Most farmers are well aware that a beef cow can produce a lot of manure each day (up to 37 kilograms) depending on her size and diet. When manure isn’t quickly broken down, the nutrients are trapped and remain unavailable to plants for months or even years. Undegraded, intact manure also takes up physical space in a pasture, leaving forage in the immediate area less palatable.

Studies have also demonstrated that greenhouse gas emissions from manure, such as methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide, are higher in dung pats when there is no insect activity. It seems these tiny insects can play a big role.

There are three general categories of dung beetles. “Dwellers” spend their entire egg-to-adult life cycle in a cow pie and they can break down a manure pat in a few weeks or months. Both “tunnellers” and “rollers” arrive to a fresh pie as adult beetles, ready to tear apart manure pats.

As their name suggests, tunnellers dig tunnels beneath the pie where they bury dung. “They aerate soil and make soil more porous to water,” Floate explains. Rollers push the manure into small balls in which they lay their eggs.

Dung beetle populations vary by habitat and the animal’s diet. “On sandy soils, I expect to see certain types of dung beetles that I don’t expect to see on clay soils,” Floate says.

“When the cattle diet is made up of forage with more moisture in the early spring, that influences what species are present in dung. Later in the season, the forage has more fibre,” he says, explaining that species composition will shift again.

Tunnellers and rollers can efficiently break down a manure pat in a matter of days. This fast-moving conversion is key for reducing bothersome cattle parasite populations.

“Horn flies, face flies, and stable flies (to a lesser extent), lay eggs in fresh cow pies,” says Floate. “If dung beetles move manure quickly, this causes the cow pie to dry quickly and colonize with predation beetles that work to reduce pest populations of flies,” he says.

Destroying the manure also eliminates developmental habitat for these and other parasites, including internal round worms, which develop in manure pats and infect grazing cattle when the nematodes are consumed.

Unfortunately, some livestock insecticides that are commonly used to control beef cattle parasites have a negative effect on beneficial insects such as dung beetles. The impact of insecticide residues depends on the type of chemical used, such as moxidectin or ivermectin, whether the product is a topical solution or injectable, or if it has a sustained release mechanism.

“If you use a standard dose of pour-on ivermectin you will see reductions of general insect activity for 12 weeks and even up to 16 weeks after treatment,” Floate says. Not all insect species are affected to the same degree and some dung beetle populations may bounce back several weeks after product application.

Spring application of parasite control products causes the most problems for dung beetles. “For dung insects, they are most active in the spring when they come out from the end of May to early June, with a second peak of adult activity in August and late September,” Floate explains.

He notes that chemical residues from parasiticides in general change the chemical profile of manure, making it appeal to different dung insects.

“During collections, we might find the same insect species but they are present in a different relative abundance,” he says.

He and his team are currently working on a rigorous project assessing the trickle-down effects that a formulation of eprinomectin has on a cow’s rumen and subsequent manure. In this chemical, part of the active ingredient is formulated to pass quickly in manure similar to a typical ivermectin, but there is a secondary “pulse” of control that is also excreted one hundred days after application before tapering off. This detailed project is also looking at cattle treated with an antibiotic alone or in combination with eprinomectin and the impact these treatments have on the bacteria and fungi in the rumen and the resulting manure.

Dung beetle activity and development is highly dependent on weather, particularly during the overwintering phase of an insect’s life cycle.

“Earlier springs mean that dung insects ‘wake’ from their overwintering state earlier in the season and remain active later into the fall,” notes Floate. Warmer winters also mean a greater likelihood of insect survival through to spring. If winters get shorter or warmer, Floate predicts that additional species of dung beetles may be able to establish in regions of Canada and help to further accelerate the breakdown of manure.

In addition to his research, Floate is working on a dung beetle field guide for producers and ranchers. “When I first started learning about dung insects, I was looking for a guide or simple book I could pick up and get an idea of what’s in cattle dung and what the benefits are,” says Floate about the motivation behind the project. The field guide includes what species are present and where, identification tips and considerations about insecticide residues.

This summer, when producers are checking cattle out in the pasture, it might be worthwhile to stop and flip over a cow pie and observe these hard-working beetles.

The post Dung beetles may be small but they play a big role on pastures appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

We all know that it’s important to provide desirable working conditions to keep employees happy. We try our best here at Greener Pastures Ranching, but there is one other aspect that we work on to keep our employees happily working. We like to provide mobile hotel accommodations for our workers. In the winter it gets a little chilly here in Alberta, Canada, so we like to provide a more suitable working environment so that our employees can come in out of the cold.

First off, I should provide you with a bit of a job description for our employees.

Job description: Our team is to collectively work together to combine solar energy with our raw materials to produce a primary product that will then be converted into a nutrient-dense energy source that can be sold for further processing. The waste product from this process will also need to be recycled back into the system to help produce more product.

Employees will work together without complaints. There will be no coffee breaks; you will be expected to work tirelessly without any days off. There are no vacation days or sick days or benefit packages. Employees are expected to work until they die. Our workplace safety policy is to eat or be eaten. We celebrate the death of the employee just as much as the life. We actually encourage employee turnover.

Are you looking for work? Are you a bacterium, yeast, fungi, nematode, earthworm or a dung beetle? I also accept resumes from mites, insects, bugs, beetles and birds of any type. I hire just about any critter that wants to come to work and can help us fulfill our goals.

The key to keeping these hired hands working is quite simple. I just have to give them room and board. They need food, water and shelter and they will work harder for me than any human.

I also have to make sure that the management practices that I use do not harm them or alter the environment that they work in. There are millions of interactions within the soil environment that nature has figured out.

I expect my hired hands to accomplish several jobs in a day. I want them to work with the plants by bringing needed minerals and nutrients so that the plants can sequester carbon, hydrogen and oxygen from the air and convert it into sugar. The plants can get the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, but they need help from my employees to get the rest. One of these transactions involves, of course, the microbes that pull nitrogen from the air in a symbiotic relationship with legumes. They provide the nitrogen to the plant and in return the plant gives the microbes sugar. I can’t imagine ever buying nitrogen when I can just have my employees get it for me. The air we breathe is 78 per cent nitrogen and it is free.

I would also like them to decompose the manure and residue that is left on the soil surface. I want them to use the nutrients to build their own bodies. I then want them to physically take the nutrients below the soil surface and then I want them to die. Many of my employees have a very short career. I want them to die and make the nutrients available to the plants again in the circle of life. It just so happens that I will have a billion more workers eager to go to work again the next day. This is how I recycle — I recycle bodies.

Here is where the problem occurs: we live in an environment with a short growing season and a long dormant season. When the weather turns cold, these employees die off and can no longer work for me. My business is about recycling nutrients and the soil life here can only do that for about four months of the year. Any environment can recycle nutrients in the growing season, but how effective are you at recycling nutrients in the dormant season?

This is where I need to bring in my mobile hotel, otherwise known as a ruminant animal (cow, sheep, goat, bison, etc.). This is one employee on my ranch that I don’t want to be efficient. I’ll say that again. I don’t want her to be efficient. I would prefer her to be inefficient but effective.

Let me explain. Did you know that about 80 per cent of the nutrients consumed by a cow comes out the back end? She just drops it on the ground as a waste product. Why would nature make such an inefficient critter? I just bet if it was up to man to design a cow, we would make sure she was 97 per cent efficient. Society has trained us this way.

Nature, on the other hand, is effective. The ruminant animal was designed for environments with a dormant season. A dormant season could be an extended dry season or a winter season. In a rain forest, the soil is never dormant and is full of microbiology all year long to decompose plant material.

The ruminant was placed in dormant season environments to give the decomposers suitable working conditions, inside the rumen of the livestock. The cow is simply a mobile hotel that allows my off-season employees a place to live and work.

The cow is a big part of ranching, but she is only a part of it. Eighty per cent of her job is to recycle plant material. Only 20 per cent of her job is to produce beef. Is that how you use her?

In most agricultural practices, most of the nutrients from the soils are exported. Only in a grazing operation are we effectively recycling the nutrients by being inefficient. If the land is healthy and our nutrient cycle is working, we have only exported 20 per cent from the soil. If you harvest the crop off the land, you may be removing up to 90 per cent of the nutrients with the crop and exporting it to someone else.

Which is easier or cheaper to replace, the 90 per cent or the 20 per cent?

I believe all agricultural land needs livestock. Yes, grain land needs fences. Livestock are very important in the regeneration of soil because of their ability to recycle.

I do not use cattle to produce beef once a year. I use them to recycle nutrients 365 days a year.

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Coop Agri-Energie Warwick, launched Monday, plans to start construction this spring on a $12 million biomethanization plant which will take in slurry and manure from dairy cattle mixed with other local businesses’ “residual organic matter.”

The new co-op — set up and run by Quebec City-based Coop Carbone — and its plant, due to start operating this fall, “will allow a dozen farmers to diversify their income streams while reducing their (greenhouse gas) emissions,” organizers said in a release.

The plant is expected to have capacity to produce 2.3 million cubic metres of renewable natural gas per year, which would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 6,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent, roughly on par with taking 1,500 cars off the road, the co-op said.

The project is expected to take in about 25,000 tonnes of farm slurry and manure per year for treatment, along with about 25,000 tonnes of agri-food wastes and municipal and industrial sludge, according to federal agency CED (Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions) in a separate release Monday.

Montreal-based Energir, formerly known as Gaz Metro, said Monday it has signed a 20-year agreement to buy all natural gas produced by the Warwick co-operative, to be routed into the company’s natural gas distribution network.

The provincial government on Monday pledged $3 million for the Warwick project from its Technoclimat program. Another $1.7 million will be put up as a repayable federal contribution from CED.

Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette on Monday described the planned system as “a doubly green technology that advances Quebec in its fight against climate change.”

Also, he said, the process will provide “good-quality, locally-produced fertilizing materials” as a byproduct for use by local crop producers, “thus closing the loop.”

Jean Nolet, CEO of Coop Carbone — a not-for-profit co-op set up to support emissions-reducing ventures — said the model for the Warwick co-op “demonstrates the importance and relevance of agriculture’s place in the energy transition, and in developing biomethanization in Quebec.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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