“What we want is cowpats that are alive – you can see the evidence here,” says Holly Purdey, pointing at dung beetle holes. She took on the 81-hectare (200-acre) Horner farm in Exmoor national park in 2018, challenging herself to produce beef and lamb while restoring nature to land she says had been “trashed” by intensive farming.
In the field of knee-high grass, her shorthorn cattle are sheltering from the sun by the tall hedges. Water scavenger beetles also feed on the dung, she says, and eat the larvae of the face flies that can torment the red and white cattle and are usually tackled with pesticides. “I think it’s incredible that we have a natural predator for the flies,” Purdey says.
