Arsenic poison

[kakayona]

Found this and just thought I would post it for everyone to be aware of it.

http://www.grist.org/article/food-arsenic-found-in-utah-kids-urine-traced-to-their-pet-chickens-fe/

 

[elmo]

Just goes to show how you have to read the label of anything you feed your chickens, and ask questions if you don't recognize the name of the ingredient. Most people would not recognize roxarsone as arsenic. And it seems that this family may have gotten confused at the feed store and bought "broiler" feed for their layers (see the comments):

http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/3759/arsenic-in-chicken-feed-and-eggs

 

[vanridge]

ok this is exactly the thread I was looking for. Don't crucify the family right away, you would be surprised how easy it is for feed stores to screw up! I asked twice at our local store for non medicated feed for my birds, the layers and the broilers and both times they loaded me up with medicated bags. the first time I forgave them because they were baby chicks and it probably didn't hurt them, the second time I was completely out of feed on a Saturday night... I asked for broiler food and laying hen food for my pullets (non medicated) and I came home with broiler food and some sort of finisher food for broilers? both medicated. Not going there to buy feed again. Now here is my question.... How long does it take for the medicated stuff to leave a layers body? Will my chickens eggs be safe? they are about 9 weeks old. Also, if you are feeding arsenic to broilers, does that get into their meat, you know the part we eat? That would make me mad.....

 

[The Chicken Lady]

Hey guys,

Just an FYI on why we're closing these threads... The topic seems to be pretty contentious; threads where this is the topic have tended to go downhill into argument and have caused a lot of work for the Staff. Feel free to read the article, research its contents and discuss it with your BYC friends via PM, but we're going to keep it out of open forum for now.

The Staff doesn't have an official position on the information in the article one way or another. We're just keeping the peace as far as discussion is concerned.

Thanks for understanding.