Help - dung beetles?

[Serotonin]

Hello everyone! This is my first time raising chickens and my young (11 week old) pullets and cockerel have been outside in their coop and run for a few weeks. I did a lot of research and decided I wanted to try the deep litter method and am at about six or seven inches of a mixture of hemp bedding and wood shavings (the white bag from TSC) right now. Things seemed to be going well, but last night as I was putting the chickens to bed, I noticed three large beetles in their run. They were each about an inch long and were rolling little balls of poop, so I can only imagine they're dung beetles of some sort. Unfortunately my phone was dead at the time so I couldn't get a picture, but I'll try to if I see them again.

I wasn't sure if I should be concerned or not, so I did some research and noticed that they might be destructive and disease carriers, which has me nervous. While I have been able to turn up some advice on the internet, I'm a total newbie and find it a bit overwhelming, particularly as a lot of it pertains to large scale farming operations. I was hoping that I could pick BYC's minds about what my next steps should be. Is this beetle the same as the litter beetles I've read about, and are they actually dangerous? Is there some sort of chicken-safe insecticide I can use to take care of them? I know they love to hide and lay eggs in deep litter - should I abandon that method and change the litter out weekly instead?

For reference, I am located in the central valley/Sierra foothills of California where it currently is very hot and dry. And of course this is happening right before the start of an unprecedented heat wave, when my stress levels for the chickens were already very high...

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Can we get photos?

 

[Geena]

In most cases beetles = a tasty treat to chickens. I wouldn't be overly concerned about the beetles carrying disease, as chickens themselves are also quite happy to pick through and eat whatever "dung" they can find. As long as the coop isn't overrun with them I wouldn't worry too much about it.
It might even work out well for you if they clean up the chicken poo.

 

[samanthaoverton]

You can always save them up..cover them in sprinkles (wearing gloves of course) and hand them out as truffles.

 

[Serotonin]

Sorry for the delay, they only come out at night and disappear completely during the day so I had to wait to get pictures. I've attached them here. Apologies for the low quality, my camera doesn't do great in the dark and all I had was the motion light outside the coop.

These are pretty big beetles, like at least an inch, maybe an inch and a half long. They do seem to either be eating or moving the chicken poo, as the back of the run was more or less poo-free when I went out there this morning. Mostly I'm worried, based on the things in this article, that they will spread disease to my chickens, though I've not seen the chickens actually interact with the beetles as they've gone to bed by the time they come out.

 

[Serotonin]

Weird, the other picture didn't attach. In any case, here it is (it's a bit clearer).

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Oh, do they live in those holes?

I think the article is more geared for large poultry farming/poultry facilities where 1000's of birds are raised and kept, but I can see your concerns. Insects, worms, etc. can be vectors for parasites and disease.
If you are raking, occasionally cleaning up and keeping your run tidy, it's probably not something I would worry about too much in a backyard setting.

 

[SourRoses]

Here in Florida, after ages of research, the state introduced dung beetles to help agricultural areas reduce manure buildup.
The kind they picked have bright green backs and are a little smaller than yours. I've seen many of them around here and I'm always glad.
The chooks never bother with them, but they don't eat the giant palmetto bugs either, and those I want gone!
They do gobble up tons of the native roaches that come out of the woods (may be young palmetto bugs, I dunno).

Upon first witnessing such horrors, I soon realized there is no hope of keeping a chicken's internals clean. We just have to hope that adult birds are hardy enough to deal with whatever they encounter. Which they have been doing for many thousands of years before we dragged the first jungle fowl out of the jungle... an environment they thrived in precisely because of the plethora of bug snacks.

I really wouldn't worry at all about the dung beetles. By removing doo, your chooks are safer from parasite transfer, and you'll have less flies! Seems like a situation to make everyone happy.

 

[Kimi BK]

Love dung beetles. They are cleaner-uppers!

 

[CaliforniaMountainChicks]

That’s a pinacate beetle, we also call them stink bugs because if you poke them they stick their butt up at you. They stink if you step on them or make them mad. They’re found all over the dry areas of the west, I see them on my property all the time here in the high desert of So Cal. They are in the darkling beetle family but I would not worry about the things mentioned in the article. The article, and others like it, are talking about commercial set ups and where darkling beetles live in the thousands with the chickens in their litter. They’re actually talking about the mealworm beetle too. The stink bugs can technically be a vector for worms, but that’s if your chickens eat them, which mine absolutely will not touch them. One was walking through the run and the chickens acted like it was some sort of alien. They pecked it and it stuck its butt up at them and they just growled at it the whole time it made its way through the run. Now they do that every time they see one lol.