Chickens and Slugs

To those who are new to us, we live in an area that can get up to 160" annual rainfall. This means mutant slugs. Believe me, we have heard it all from well meaning people that truly want to help with great suggestions on how to get rid of slugs. The most common being the beer in a dish, pan, bowl, et cetera. Then there are the eggshells, the DE, and copper methods. Though I truly appreciate many having the desire to help, most simply do not understand the level of slugs we have here. We have tried all those methods, several times, in different ways, yet they are mostly useless in our battle against the slugs. I have even tried the ones I rarely hear people say such as coffee grounds.

Let me say it again. MUTANT slugs. Or as I not-so-lovingly refer to as MUTANT NINJA SLUGS. Though the crushed egg shell method is somewhat helpful, I have still found slug slime going right across them and the slugs happily chewing away on my vegetation. I swear I hear their maniacal slug laughter.

And no, we do not want ducks where we currently are at, so this is also not an option for us. Though again, I appreciate this oft given advice.

I have yet to try Epsom salt but because of how wet it is here, I know this too would be useless.

The most effective method I could come up with was hand-picking every morning and tossing into a dish of salt. Last summer, I had mornings I picked over 200 a day but mostly averaged around 100.

Then there came the chickens. Despite a bit of controversy, I felt there may be hope in our newly acquired chickens.

I decided to go on an information hunt on whether or not chickens would eat slugs and was elated to find that many will and that a good many chickens found them to be a delicacy. However, when mentioned to friends more experienced with chickens, they seemed to kind of laugh and wish me good luck, as if my new found hope for slug control was nothing but a fantasy.

However, I recently started harvesting the slugs off my plants and offering them to my chickens and my still young chickens began to greedily gobble them up.

Then there came more opposition from one of my youtube followers: "Slugs will give chickens worms. Please no slugs." Again, the advice was appreciated but that was the first I had heard that and the immediate thought that went through my head was "How does one keep chickens from eating slugs when they free range?" and "What would feral chickens eat?"

Of course I did some research and though yes, I found that slugs can sometimes carry a parasite that will give chickens worms, so do earth worms. This made me laugh. How does one keep their chickens from eating earthworms too? Chickens are omnivores and will eat all kinds of insects and even mice. This is a good thing and they were created this way so why try to stop them?

Note: I AM putting DE in their food to kill or prevent internal parasites.

So all this rambling in this post was in hopes to promote more discussion from fellow chicken owners. What are your thoughts on this issue? Do your chickens eat slugs? Have you had worm problems if they do? Any advice you have to offer on this? Any other organic slug control suggestions that I have not already listed here? Chances are I have tried that too, but please, give me your best shot on that! :D

Thank you for taking the time!

~Heidi

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