HELP!! Chickens ate styrofoam!!!**

[Sarahcheeba]

My chicks keep eating styrofoam too ....my concern is if the eggs will contain toxins because of it? I feed those eggs to my toddler almost everyday and I don't want him to be ingesting poison (obviously).

 

[tellynpeep]

I don't think they digest it; I think it just passes through them. My girls have eaten TONS of the pink foamboard that USED to insulate around the bottom of my house. They also got into my garage and ate a large part of a piece of white styrofoam insulation. None of them got sick. My only losses have been to predators :-(

 

[Sarahcheeba]

I wonder if any of the toxins get in to the eggs... is there anyway to know for sure??

 

[TweeTea]

Styrofoam is like chicken crack! 100% agree.

I found out when refilling a bean bag. I obviously did a bad job as little balls poured out on the floor and escaped all over the house and somehow out into the yard. My chicks were only a few weeks old and kept warm in the house at the time, they went beserk!! I freaked out trying to stop them but for months they kept finding and eating balls.

Since then they have been styrofoam obsessed, they can spot a broccoli box a mile away and heaven help anyone who tries to get between them and that crispy white addictive foamy material. I gave them egg white meringue one day to see if it had the same response but they found it pretty average. So the battle continues, me trying to stop the chooks eating my eskies and their coop roof insulation.

I later heard that commercial hatcheries give styrofoam to chickens as it reduces aggresive behaviour, lowering injuries and mortality in flocks that are space limited. No idea about the toxins though. You could try researching conditions under which it will breakdown and what it breaks down to. I'm sure there will be notes on this on the web

 

[rabbitfire]

OMG! MY DELEWARE ROOSTER WHO IS 7WEEKS OLD AND HUGE!! JUST ATE ALMOST A ENTIRE PLATE MADE OF STYROFOAM. GLAD TO HEAR THERE IS NOT TOO MUCH TO WORRY ABOUT. ONLY IT'S MY BABY! HIS NAME IS "BINGO".
RIGHT NOW, BINGO IS ONLY POOPING WATER, SO I GAVE HIM A LITTLE MASH WITH ALOT OF GRIT. SOME COOKED CREAM OF WHEAT WITH MILK AND MARGERINE. NOW I WAIT. I'M GOING TO GIVE HIM A LITTLE FLAX SEED OIL TOO. I WILL KEEP EVERYONE INFORMED.

 

[meghanshierling]

dont worry....alot of the time if you dont have the proper colored (red) heat lamp the chicks will peck at each other and possible kill one of them....styrofoam keep them from doing that and keeps them entertained for hours

 

[mike256]

This is great info. My birds have gone to town on the foam vent cover things around the house. Once they realized the whole of the skirting is foam block I started trying to kind of fence them out with plastic poultry fence. Well that didn't work for long. Those little buggers are trickey for now I have a fairly ghetto system of various boards and pieces of metal to keep them out. They did not seem affected by eating the foam. I try and keep them out of it.

but yes. Crack. Oh Boy they go to town. :cd

 

[casportpony]

Gizzard contents from deceased bird - quarter is for scale, was not in gizzard.












-Kathy

 

[enola]

Gee Kathy, I bet you don't have to do much spring cleaning do you?

On a serious note, did that chicken die? Is that why you did an examination?

 

[casportpony]

Gee Kathy, I bet you don't have to do much spring cleaning do you?

On a serious note, did that chicken die? Is that why you did an examination?

Fear not, that came out of a peacock that I sold two months earlier. The guy called me and said that he was really sick, so I offered to try to save him, but was too late as he had blackhead and was probably septic by the time I picked him up. Since the peacock I sold was raised indoors and off the ground, it did not ingest those here. We're super careful about picking up that sort of stuff, so I have yet to see anything but small rocks in the gizzards of my birds.

-Kathy