Dung Beetles are coming to town...

Monday 18th November 2019

Our Agribusiness programme has dung it again! The world's top environmental restoration agents are coming to an Otago farm near you.


The mother of all dung balls!
The mother of all dung balls!

After recent negotiations with Dr. Shaun Forgie, founder of Dung Beetle Innovations, our Agribusiness programme is set to receive a population package of dung beetles to be released and monitored on Garth and Debbie Mitchell's sheep and beef farm in East Taieri on Friday 28th of February 2020. Whilst providing great benefit to their farm and the surrounding community farms, the project will also engage our Agribusiness students in a long term data collection and analysis experiment of the benefits of dung beetles as environmental cleaners, research that will contribute the scientific literature already published.

Beetles the colours of the rainbow! — Image by: Craig Preston

As part of the release, and in partnership with Silver Fern Farms, Agribusiness will host a FREE dung beetle seminar with Dr. Forgie at the host farm on the day of release (Friday 28th February 2020). At present we have 25 places for the seminar that will include the beetle release (and morning tea) at 10am, followed by the seminar on-site from 11am - 12.30pm, followed by lunch. Complimentary morning tea, lunch and drinks will be served as part of the event. 

One of our imported species... — Image by: Craig Preston

We are calling on farmers in the McGlashan (and wider) community who would like to know about dung beetles as an option for their farm/s to attend this landmark event, have the chance to personally meet the scientist who has made this possible in New Zealand and to ask all of the questions you have about these beetles ' potential for improving your farming environment. Beetles are scientifically proven to provide substantial benefits to farming environments as seen below:

Dung beetle benefits (Dung Beetle Innovations, 2019) — Image by: Craig Preston

Please click on the link below to register for the seminar (which is free due to the generosity of our partners, Dung Beetle Innovations and Silver Fern Farms) to book your place, or contact Dr. Craig Preston on craig.preston@mcglashan.school.nz (or 0277275368 mobile) to register your interest. We look forward to hosting you in February!

REGISTER HERE NOW: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScPYmvEr7swZSEBVLyfNiVZLoBt8LajL7GC2QCpKeVUVnGiqQ/viewform?usp=sf_link