Can I feed my chickens rollie-pollies?

[SammyJo425]

I get how they remove lead from the soil - storing it in their bodies.

Doesn't it return to the soil when they die?

Scientists have found that pill and sow bugs can ingest a pretty good amount of heavy metal contamination in the soil. Once they take in the heavy metal, they concentrate it into small balls of heavy metal in their gut. This means that pill and sow bugs would have no problem living in an old mining area that might be contaminated with lead, cadmium, arsenic or other toxins. While this may seem like a great way to clean up contaminated land, the heavy metals do not actually leave the area. Instead they are just concentrated in the pill and sow bugs. Once the bugs die, those toxins would likely go back into the soil.

Yep you are correct, however. I’m thinking if I can set traps to remove them from my garden and put them in my compost bin. Maybe I can minimize what goes back into my garden. But none the less maybe not good for chickens to ingest them.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Ditto, heavy metal collecting machines they are. Chickens are pretty smart about avoiding what might be toxic in large quantity. I'd leave them be, never had them damage anything in the garden.

 

[FatDragonFarm]

Uhhhhhh if you are talking about pill bugs, they really are doing no harm to your garden. They are scavengers...they eat rotting vegetation and mold and such, nothing like leaves or produce. I'm sure your chicks *could* eat them, I'm just not sure why you want to get rid of them...

Have to also attest that roly polies have completely obliterated my garden. I find them all over my plants, especially at the young tip growth. Easy to knock them off and then they roll up, but with thousands of them they have decimated entire beds overnight. I just wish my chickens ate them…

 

[Apocolibri]

My hens eat them as fast as I can toss them into the pen. They live under bricks that I have around the coop, and when I lift up the bricks many are on the underside and others are on the ground. The hens eat them as fast as I scrape them into the pen. I started doing this four days ago and just harvested the largest eggs these chickens have ever laid.

 

[Srdtravels]

Uhhhhhh if you are talking about pill bugs, they really are doing no harm to your garden. They are scavengers...they eat rotting vegetation and mold and such, nothing like leaves or produce. I'm sure your chicks *could* eat them, I'm just not sure why you want to get rid of them...

They do LOTS of harm to certain garden plants, i.e., newly emerging beets, rhubarb, green and wax beans, lettuce and spinach, and flowers such as sunflowers, zinnias and roses.