An other way using mktime and not date('t') :
$dateStart= date("Y-m-d", mktime(0, 0, 0, 10, 1, 2016)); //2016-10-01
$dateEnd = date("Y-m-d", mktime(0, 0, 0, 11, 0, 2016)); //This will return the last day of october, 2016-10-31 :)
So this way it calculates either if it is 31,30 or 29