chickens and black widows??

[fishman65]

I have watched my chickens eat black widow spiders. I have even caught them and fed them to my chickens. To a chicken a bug is a bug, venom or not they eat them all. That is unless they have a bitter taste. Also i have guineas and they eat everything that does'nt move. Between the both breeds there are no bugs that i have to worry about. Guneas will even attack, kill and eat small snakes.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote:
I'm not sure this has been scientifically examined. However, a couple details would suggest that risk of envenomation by eating the spider would be low. First, birds are one of the biggest predators of spiders, which would indicate that envenomation is relatively rare. In fact, a lot of wild birds specialize on eating spiders. Second, spiders are incredibly fragile. The likelihood of a spider surviving the first peck of a bird would be extremely low if not non-existent. The spider's venom is encapsulated within a blind sac located within the head and connected to the back end of each of the fangs--not inside the fangs. The release of the venom requires a signal from the spider's brain to muscles surrounding the venom glands, which in turn, causes the release of the venom. That signal is not sent if the spider has not first bitten the thing attacking it. My guess is that spider would stay largely intact within the crop. Once it reached the gizzard, digestive fluids would destroy the venom, which is composed mostly of larger neurotoxic polypeptides and smaller biogenic amines and amino acids. You did ask for a detailed explanation.

Quote:
I'm glad chickens aren't venomous! Although, it would make feeding them and free-ranging time much more exciting! You're right, spiders couldn't bite through the feathers. They could possibly crawl between them to get to the skin, but that would be very unlikely and I don't think the chicken would tolerate it. I think that if a chicken were to be bitten, it would be on the foot. The one scenario in which I could imagine a chicken being bitten is at night on the roost and on the foot. If you had a black widow building a web that was connected to the roost, it could escape predation during the day by hiding in a crevice. At night, when it builds and repairs it's web, the spider could make connections to the roost and if a chicken were to step on the end of the web, it is possible that the spider could bite. Even that scenario would be rare as such disturbance of the web usually causes avoidance in the spider.

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

can someone give a detailed explanation as to why the venom doesn't affect the chicken?

It has to be injected to be effective​

 

[cptbahama]

I have a small grove of fruit trees near the chicken coop. The trunks of all the trees have plastic corrugated pipe sections around them to keep the rabbits from girdling the trunks. From time to time I lift up the plastic pipe to check the trunks. There are always black widows in them. Probably 9 out of 10 trees has a black widow in the trunk protector. The orchard is coming awake with spring so I've been working in there a lot lately. I lifted several pipes up and sure enough, black widows. So I took them all off and let the chickens range in the orchard for a couple hours yesterday. They beat the crap out of some of my collard greens but the fruit tree trunks were picked clean! And they spent a lot of time around each tree. That was yesterday. None dead yet!

 

[katydidit]

Quote:
I'm not sure this has been scientifically examined. However, a couple details would suggest that risk of envenomation by eating the spider would be low. First, birds are one of the biggest predators of spiders, which would indicate that envenomation is relatively rare. In fact, a lot of wild birds specialize on eating spiders. Second, spiders are incredibly fragile. The likelihood of a spider surviving the first peck of a bird would be extremely low if not non-existent. The spider's venom is encapsulated within a blind sac located within the head and connected to the back end of each of the fangs--not inside the fangs. The release of the venom requires a signal from the spider's brain to muscles surrounding the venom glands, which in turn, causes the release of the venom. That signal is not sent if the spider has not first bitten the thing attacking it. My guess is that spider would stay largely intact within the crop. Once it reached the gizzard, digestive fluids would destroy the venom, which is composed mostly of larger neurotoxic polypeptides and smaller biogenic amines and amino acids. You did ask for a detailed explanation.

Quote:
I'm glad chickens aren't venomous! Although, it would make feeding them and free-ranging time much more exciting! You're right, spiders couldn't bite through the feathers. They could possibly crawl between them to get to the skin, but that would be very unlikely and I don't think the chicken would tolerate it. I think that if a chicken were to be bitten, it would be on the foot. The one scenario in which I could imagine a chicken being bitten is at night on the roost and on the foot. If you had a black widow building a web that was connected to the roost, it could escape predation during the day by hiding in a crevice. At night, when it builds and repairs it's web, the spider could make connections to the roost and if a chicken were to step on the end of the web, it is possible that the spider could bite. Even that scenario would be rare as such disturbance of the web usually causes avoidance in the spider.

just realized I said chickens not spiders, lol

 

[edgroger]

Quote:
and that I did

Thanks gallo