Chickens are eating Styrofoam!!! HELP!!!

[SweetLilRachy00]

I know chickens have a crop and they will eat gravel and such to help break up their food, but will the styrofoam hurt them? Will it go into the stomach? What about egg production?

Is this dangerous? We are just pretending like it is, until further notice.

HELP!!

(Ps-At least they are well insulated!)

 

[Mark1975]

Let's use some common sense. Styrofoam is a petroleum based product (polystyrene). There is no possible nutritional value to it at all. Toxicity is very possible. Even if it does nothing but pass through their system, it could still lead to nutritional deficiencies. No one would even think to feed Styrofoam to their cats, dogs, horses, cows, or any other live stock. Just because chickens will eat it does not mean that they should be allowed to. Some people say that they need it for some unknown reason. Seriously, Styrofoam has been around for less than 100 years. Chickens have been around for a lot longer than that. If they really "needed" it, how could they have survived without it?

 

[tamiep]

I found this on davesgarden.com

I was wondering about the different experiences people have been having with styrofoam and their chickens.

Mine attacked my homemade hatcher like ice cream when I left it out to sterilize in the sun. So I could see why it might be a good thing to use to distract chickens from plucking each other.

Other people report their chickens were seriously sickened or killed by eating it.

I think the confusion may be from the general term "Styrofoam". It is a registered name for the insulation "polystyrene". Polystyrene is the substance they make coffee cups and disposabel fast food containers from (or did). It is also what they make the styrofoam coolers you can make into incubators. It isn't, in itself, considered toxic (although some of the chemicals used in its manufacture are) but it takes forever to breakdown and is not very environmentally friendly for that reason.

Unfortunately, polystyrene is highly flamable and is usually not approved for use as insulation in building construction. Solid building insulation is made from "isocynates". Isocynates are very toxic and can have many long term health consequences. See this link: http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ohb/HESIS/iso.htm

So I wouldn't panic if your chicken attacks a styrofoam coffee cup--but I would be very careful with them around solid building insulation.

 

[camille]

Thank you so much for answering this question for me. My father brought me a home made coop completely insulated with foam. They took one look at it and attacked it like the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel. So now they have to sleep in the yard till I figure out how to cover it. Thanks to you, I won't waste my time trying cardboard. Also I won't worry about them keeling over from a clogged gut. Thanks

 

[sunnydt]

mine have eaten styrofoam too. sheesh, dont they have tastebuds?

 

[bottledchaos]

One of the girlies was looking a little off this week, looking weak, not foraging, sitting around so we dragged her inside and discovered she was rail thin. (She's also molting so we didn't notice the weight loss, just thought it was feather loss). She drank water like crazy but only picked at her food, and she had diarrhea pretty badly. She got unlimited supplies of crumbles, scratch, nyger seed and suet cake. As well as oyster and grit. Today she finally started eating purposefully. Her first solid "business" appears to be full of blue foam insulation. I found the chunk I think she'd gotten into and the amount missing is pretty spectacular. I'm worried that she might have blocked herself to the point that it's a health concern. Her crop isn't hard, has anyone's chicken eaten a large amount of foam and recovered? I'm grateful to hear that so far no one has a story of death-by-styrofoam. My big plans are to keep an eye on her and do my best to fatten her up.

 

[swampmama]

To answer the question of whether there is a chemical risk from eating styrofoam ... it has just been shown that shellfish living on styrofoam will absorb the flame retardants into their fat (https://microplastic.wordpress.com/...-of-hazardous-additives-for-marine-organisms/). The shellfish also have micro-sized styrofoam in their bodies. It seems that something similar would happen biologically on eating it, even when talking about a chicken versus the mussels in this study.

I realize this is a really old thread, but this one comes up right away on a google search, and there is a lot of knowledge here (and great stories - thank you for those!) I just read through the whole thing, and found lots of others here with the same questions. So I'm posting here in case others might find this study useful.

And thanks for all the great information on this site!

 

[FeatherTay]

Would really like to know if Styrofoam hurts them and us by eating the eggs.

@azygous once said this advice; “A little bit won't harm your chickens, but a lot is going to cause problems eventually, perhaps gumming up their digestive systems. I'm sure that would be more cost effective than building a fence.

As for eating the eggs, I would bet you get far more toxic exposure from the pesticides and dyes that are in the corporate agricultural food we all are sold than what little might turn up in your eggs from a minute amount of styrofoam.”

 

[Cuban Longtails]

lol, just block further access to it and they should be okay. Mine have eaten pieces of sheetrock, glass, and anything else they think might be nifty and they're all still alive and kicking.

Just the other day I had one that decided a string of tarp looked tasty. I had to -gently- pull it out of it's throat....

*sigh*

 

[JenniferJoIN]

My chickens just did the same thing. They pecked a styrofoam lid we had put up as a secondary barrier. So far they seem to be okay.... I can't wait to see what other people think!