What is doing this?

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HashRouge

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Fairly frequently, I find fresh holes in the earth under horse poo when I am poo picking. They are fairly small, maybe 1-2 cm in diameter, and often there is excavated dirt under the horse poo as well. Any idea what is causing this? Would it be a dung beetle or something similar?
 
HashRouge said:
Fairly frequently, I find fresh holes in the earth under horse poo when I am poo picking. They are fairly small, maybe 1-2 cm in diameter, and often there is excavated dirt under the horse poo as well. Any idea what is causing this? Would it be a dung beetle or something similar?
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Worms and beetles
 
I often find pretty, shiny, blue beetles in our dung and find holes under the dung too. I assume the blue beetles come up through the holes.
I'm no sure what kind of beetles they are but they seem harmless.
 
I thought they were worm holes but I’m really excited if they are dung beetles because it’s the first time I’ve seen them in any of the fields here. I have tried to look after my track and paddock this year and it’s nice to know I’m on the right path.
 
Lovely beetles - they say great things about the health of your soil. My best find was five holes per horse poo! which you can see below.

Mine are iridescent blue underneath and are about the size of a thumb nail.
 

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I don't tend to find any beetles, so hopefully they're safely in their holes and I haven't been scooping them up! That said, hopefully they'd quite enjoy themselves on my poo pile!
 
I have often wondered whether they search for a pile of poo, then build their hole, and if that is the case, how far do they travel, or whether they wait for poo to land on top of their hole!
 
Some of the holes I find under my poo (my horses' poo I hasten to add) are massive, about 2 cm across. Other poo piles have lots of small holes. I often find dozens of the small beetles in my barrow while poo picking but I've never seen what I assume is the large maxi version. Encouragingly, since we have started letting our lawn grow into a meadow through the last few summers, we now have them there too - they take the dogs' poo down into the soil within a couple of days sometimes, if we are lax on removing it ourselves
 
Tarragon said:
I have often wondered whether they search for a pile of poo, then build their hole, and if that is the case, how far do they travel, or whether they wait for poo to land on top of their hole!
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They fly quite long distances - there are 50 species in the UK all with different ranges of flight. I have had the odd large one fly into the barn - they make a big noise !!

They like a fresh poo, fly to it and then burrow underneath - the hole is them pulling the poo down into the soil to lay eggs in / eat.

They aerate, fertilise and do all sorts of good things to encourage other soil dwellers
 
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