| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Mary-Jane |
Can I give the chooks beer-soaked slugs & snails?I've got loads of dead slugs and snails floating in my beer traps in the garden. Would it be okay if I chuck 'em to the chooks - or would they get squiffy and keel over?
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| Jonnyboy |
Are they fresh?
Try it, prob won't do any harm and you might get some comedy. |
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| Mary-Jane |
No idea...  Presumably the beer will have pickled them slightly.
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| Bodger |
Chuck em away ! There's being green and then there's being green !
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| Treacodactyl |
Strictly speaking no as feeding beer to chickens would break the DEFRA rules on feeding human food to livestock. On a practical note if you feed slugs and snails to poultry you'll probably need to worm them more frequently as the worms live in the slugs and snails. As for getting drunk hens used to commonly run in orchards eating fermenting apples IIRC and can get drunk but I wouldn't have thought a little beer would harm them. | ||
| Sarah D |
Personally, I wouldn't - I would put them on the compost heap.
Cows in orchards get drunk on the fermenting apples on the ground,a nd have been known to suffer hangovers. |
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| Bodger |
We had to stop putting down beer traps because the dogs got a taste for the hard stuff. 
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| Mary-Jane |
Okay - the compost heap for the pickled (in more ways that one) snails and slugs it is then. Ta all. | ||
| dougal |
Many years ago, I had a pony that got roaring drunk on windfalls. And suffered a hangover. A sight to see... Anyway - what's the best method of disposing of **salt** soaked slugs? I've got approx 2 gallons (500+ slugs and snails easily) with a couple of espresso cups of salt. (And a bad back, and very little salad left) Seems rather a lot of salt to put on the compost heap. And BTW there's one type of small (thin but over an inch long) slug that just crawls out of brine. (But they are easy to chop in two... ) Last night found a beetle in process of eating the slug it had caught. Very helpful, but at the rate he was going, I need the ground to be crunchy with beetles. The frog is growing fat, but he and I need more help with this task. Anyone looking for summer grazing for their hedgehogs? |
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| Nick |
Weren't there a bunch of Hebridean hedgehogs looking to relocate? | ||
| Woodburner |
Treacodactyl do you have a link for that? The defra site is ..well to be nice about it: it could do with more categorised links, lots more! | ||
| Treacodactyl |
I've just noticed this posted on another site which explains a bit: http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/by-prods/pdf/swill-leaflet.pdf
Basically anything bought from a shop or restaurant or anything that has entered your kitchen cannon be fed to any animal that someone might think is livestock, i.e. hens. The daft thing is that defra tend to refer to waste and someone might say they buy something specially for their hens so it's not waste but the spirit of the law means you can't do that either. More details here: http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/by%2Dprods/wastefood/formerfoodstuffs-qa.htm#7 |
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| dpack |
hope you use frontline if yurr offrin |
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| Woodburner |
Thanks very much for thsoe links; I've been trying to find them for days now.
Bizarre that the first one seems to state clearly "You cannot feed any kind of catering waste to farmed animals" and even goes on to include domestic kitchen waste and pet chickens specifically, and yet the more explanatory webpages refer in principle to animal products/byproducts and even allows some foods: "Milk and milk based products and biscuits, bakery waste, pasta, chocolate, sweet and similar products contain ingredients, such as rennet or melted fat, milk or eggs, which have been incorporated in those products but which are not the main ingredient can be fed to livestock. Adequate measures must be in place to ensure against cross contamination by meat and other products of animal origin." The last sentence there seems to be the really important bit, but further down it gets a bit silly again: It seems that kitchens are the devil, just don't take the slugs into the kitchen and you are probably ok 
Treacodactyl, if you manage to find the actual regs I'd love a link to them too 
In the meantime I will continue to use the common sense that told me, as a seven year old child on a trip to a farm, that feeding animal s to herbivores (fishmeal in pellets for cows) was a bad thing. |
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| Treacodactyl |
The phrase "Adequate measures must be in place to ensure against cross contamination by meat and other products of animal origin" means that the products cannot pass through a shop or kitchen so rules it out for most people. I think that phrase only refers to waste from a factory. I'm not sure if I'll ever find more info, I'm certainly not going to look at the EU regs. 
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| Woodburner |
I can't say I blame you!
The house I should be moving to any day now. . . has a vegetable garden, sheds and a conservatory so what veg I can't get fresh can go keep in the shed for a day or two, and it will all get prepared in the garden or conservatory, depending on the weather, with a dedicated chopping board and knife (and I already do that cos of salads). That should do it! |