No one would normally blink an eye at new animals arriving at an agricultural school, but 50 or so farmers have braved wet weather to watch the state's first widescale spring-active dung beetle release at Denmark Agricultural College.

They are hoping that spring beetles can offer their herd and themselves some relief during the six to eight weeks of the season they are plagued with flies.

The school was one of three release sites for the Onthophagus vacca colonies which made their way across the Nullarbor from South Australia in a plastic container with air holes poked in the lid.

The long-awaited day came after many years of work by the Wilson Inlet Catchment Council (WICC) and entomologist Dr Bernard Doube to find a suitable spring-active species for the WA's Great Southern region.

WICC had a long list of farmers hoping to be involved in the trial, including Redmond dairy farmers Peter and Maria Hart who signed up their dairy.

"[The flies] tend to bite the cows a fair bit," said Mr Hart.

"[They] jump around and kick ... it makes it hard for everybody."

"Less flies ... peaceful cows, and happier milking times for us," said Mrs Hart.

Beetles are released into fresh cow pats so they can feed and lay their eggs. ( ABC Rural: Kit Mochan )

Aside from outcompeting flies for food, sheep graziers can benefit from the expert poo recyclers.

"There's been experiments showing that dung burial by the beetles reduces the number of worms," said Dr Doube.

"But they've only been with very low numbers of dung beetles.

"Now we've got very high numbers of winter dung beetles and we expect very high numbers of these two spring-active beetles.

"I expect it will be a major biocontrol agents for intestinal worms."

Research has long pointed to dung beetles as nature's most efficient recyclers, with many benefits to farmers including improving soil health, pasture production and water quality.

Dr Doube, who worked with the CSIRO for nearly 30 years, is hoping to change attitudes towards the insects.

"What we want to do with that is make dung beetles accepted as part of the standard way in which one runs a property," Dr Doube said.

"In the same way you might expect [to use a Rhizobia] seed coating with legumes. That's a standard practice now, nobody even queries it."

An expensive box of insects

The three boxes of spring-active beetles released in the Great Southern were an expensive investment at $2,500 dollars a box.

What a $2,500 box of dung beetles looks like. ( ABC Rural: Kit Mochan )

They are in high demand and short supply after being bred from a handful of the remaining stock left over from a CSIRO dung beetle research program.

The CSIRO entrusted the last two species from the project to Dr Doube after it folded in 2015.

He kept the decades of research alive by breeding and selling the beetles, which only lay their eggs once a year.

"Each box has 1,000 beetles in it," he said.

When asked if the number is accurate, he is quite certain.

"I harvest them," he said.

"Hands and knees out with a shovel, in the paddock ... with my wife actually.

"When you're hand-rearing beetles rather than harvesting from the field ... they require much more labour."

WICC are hopeful that with a steady supply of livestock waste the numbers of beetles at the Agricultural College will multiply from 1,000 to 20,000 in a year, and the invertebrates will have fully colonised the grounds in four to seven years.

With that, the cost of harvesting the beetles is expected to drop dramatically.

"Once we have sufficient density here we can harvest in the future," WICC project officer Shaun Ossinger said.

"We can extend these colonies and get them planted throughout the catchment."

Dung beetles are seen as a win-win for farmers and the environment.

By decreasing the amount of effluent and fertiliser run off from farms, WICC are hoping to improve the condition of the Wilson Inlet.

Could the dung beetle become the next cane toad?

Although Australia has over 500 native species of dung beetle, Onthophagus vacca is one of the 23 foreign species introduced by the CSIRO since the 1960s.

Extinct Australian megafauna, such as this diprotodon optatum, would have supported much larger species of native dung beetles. ( Science/AAAS: Peter Murray )

It is thought that when much of our large megafauna died out thousand years ago, so did the beetles that fed off their scat.

Current native beetle species have evolved to eat small, hard droppings from marsupials such as kangaroos and bandicoots.

This leaves the large moist dung pats left by cattle, sheep and horses off the menu.

Dr Doube is confident they lack the drive to become a problem invasive species, pointing to their fussy appetites.

"The answer in my view is no," he said.

"The dung beetles are entirely dependent upon the supply of dung."