Slug Pellets

[Kerry L]

I have just contacted the Hedgehog Preservation Society as I made rather a disturbing discovery. I found that one of our visiting hedgehogs had been eating slug pellets. In fact it had eaten so many, that the little poos were totally turqoise and crumbly. I fear the worst, but I had to find out if there was anything I could do. This is the reply:

HI Kerry
It sounds like slug pellets, and if it had ingested enough to turn poo blue I personally wouldn't be too hopeful that it has survived I'm afraid.
Please do write to local magazines, newspapers, WI's, gardening groups, etc and let them know what you have seen. Ask them to log onto our website http://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/FAQS/Gardening.htm for tips on how to tend the garden AND look after hedgehogs. If anyone prefers they can request a gardeining leaflet (enclosing an A5 SAE) to the address below and we will post a copy to them.
Hope this helps,
Thanks
Fay Vass
British Hedgehog Preservation Society
Hedgehog House
Dhustone
Ludlow
Shropshire
SY8 3PL

Tel : 01584 890 801

Apparently if anyone uses slug pellets, they should look regularly for dying slugs and remove them before hedgehogs eat them. Unfortunately it appears that it may have been one tiny slug and a whole pile of pellets (instead of being scattered sparsley). We do not use slug pellets as we garden organically, so I shall be writing lots of letters!

Here is the site for the organisation for the hedgehogs.
www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk (http://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/)

[bird lady]

safest way to rid garden of slugs and not harm wildlife is a pot of beer in a yoghurt pot dug in the garden slugs love it they drown in it...............sad but safest metho d for other wildlife.:)

[dougied]

Slugs, it seems, are not the easiest things to drown! The other night I went into the garden and removed around 30 slugs and snails from off my plants and dumped them all in a bucket of water. Not nice, I know, but apparently if you just move them away out of your garden, they have a homing device and just come back. Anyway, when I came to check the bucket next morning, they had all gone. I could just imagine them, after swimming a few lengths of the bucket, just crawling up and out ready to devour my plants another night! How come they seem to drown in beer, but not in just plain water?

[Kerry L]

Hi dougied
If you add some salt to your bucket of water, I guarantee that they will not swim out! It does make a very unpleasant soup, though! I feel if they happily munch my veg and plants, they might enjoy some salt with their dinner - oops another one bites the dust. Chase Organics do some good products for the war against slugs and snails. One I use happens to be blue pellets, but are totally harmless to wildlife, so my hedgehogs are safe.
Regards, Kerry

[dougied]

Kerry, thanks for that advice, I'll try some salt in my bucket tonight.

[Loopy]

I too use the blue pellets that are harmless to hogs and birds. I haven't had any reported incidents so far and my sunflower seedlings are not getting eaten to death!

They also live in the soil so I have got some nemaslug stuff that I'm going to water in today. I haven't tried it before but it's also wildlife friendly.

My question is, once you've drowned the slugs in beer, what do you do with them afterwards?

[Kerry L]

I believe it is safe to tip out the sludge in the garden - it's just decomposing natural matter. If you log on to:
www.organiccatalog.com (http://www.organiccatalog.com)
Click on "pests and weeds", then "slugs and snails", scroll down to "professional slug and snail trap", click on "detail" and they say that the contents can be put on the compost heap. Depending on the compost heap, I would recommend putting only the lumpy matter on it, and the liquid will probably act as a plant tonic of sorts. A word of warning, if you are tempted to purchase this product (as I was) it doesn't contain the special bait, so I will be going off to test the local beer. Actually I am not a beer drinker, but am rather partial to rum - testing is for the slugs only!;)
Regards, Kerry

[Loopy]

Thanks Kerry. :)

[angie a]

A teaspoon of washing up liquid also seem to prevent them crawling out. This also applies to anything you want to get rid of by knocking it into water. It sems to form a film on the surface that the beetles, wasps etc can't penetrate easily.

[Esmo]

Hi. I'm new , but I'm going to have my two pennerth !!
Anyone who thinks they can eliminate the slugs and snails from their gardens with poison pellets are kidding themselves.
You will just add more and more poison into the garden for the birds to eat.
You can always buy more plants, but once the birds are gone, they're gone.

Esmo.

[Jandy]

I have read that plants can be protected from the ravages of slugs & snails by sprinkling oystershell grit (as sold by CJ) around plants, which the pests won't cross, and still leaves them a tasty & healthy snack for thrushes & other wildlife.

[Dillibags]

I used to have horrendous slug problems until last year - mid summer to be exact. A hedgehog moved in...........yay!! He's here again this year, find his poo on the lawn almost daily, and no slug damage.........after 20 years of fighting them.

I never used slug pellets anyway, used to prowl the garden after dark with salt!

[Jimbo]

How come they seem to drown in beer, but not in just plain water?


Probably too drunk to swim to the side:D

[chemaine]

I have just called the hegehog preservation society, as a hedgehog only the size of an adults hand(female) has been in my garden the last two days. Only today it reapeared looking a little wobly and unstable on its feet. They said it looks like slug pellet poisning. I don't use them as i just hang around my garden in the wet with a tub of salt.:mad:

[PiratesAhoy!]

Could also be dehydration.

[AmandaMoo]

I used to use slug pellets, the ones that claimed to be pet friendly, making sure I scattered them thinly. The salt method, sprinkled straight on them but both methods seemed to take forever before they stopped moving. I was then struggling to come up with a quicker, painless way & decided the best instant way to do it was to just slice them with a trowl. Sounds a bit harsh but it means they're not squirming around in pain or being drowned. I think it's the most humane way.

I hope your hedgehog is better now Chemaine, did you manage to save the poor little thing?

A 80/

[Jenny]

Hope you managed to save your hedgehog!

Know it sounds daft, but the best way to dispose of slugs is to encourage hedgehogs. Some of my plants are favourite slug fodder, but this year not one plant has suffered - flower or veg! I put it down to having consistently fed hedgehogs in different places around the garden (plus having quite a bit of jungle helps :rolleyes:). I went out with the food just before the second half of the last night of the proms !! and have ten very large gutsy hogs - two of them came out as soon as I approached their normal feeding patch - despite dog in attendance!! I move my potted plants once a week just before dark and they get in there fast.

I have six late-ish juveniles and am keeping an eye on them - they seem to get a bit bullied by the bigger ones so wait till the bullies are in usual place and then put food down nearby. They are visibly bigger after ten days so have hopes of getting them through winter. I've also created two more log piles - so hopefully that will help give them some protection.

Crashing out - dealing with over 600 enquiries in five hours has left me half dead!!

Night all!

[70007]

I dont have so much of a problem with slugs, as with snails. I dont know if hedgehogs bother with them. Thrushes do, but I dont get many of those in my garden.

I am resigned to growing plants that the snails do not like. Delphiniums are out, as are French Marigolds, but Wallflowers seem to be ok and foxgloves (probably the poisonous nature of the latter helps). Lupins will come under attack, but if the plant can be protected in its early stages it seems to cope. I use broken egg shells around the base of plants which is too rough a surface for the slugs and snails to cross, a bit like the oystershell grit mentioned earlier.

[Connor]

[slugs] also live in the soil so I have got some nemaslug stuff that I'm going to water in today. I haven't tried it before but it's also wildlife friendly.

Says who Loopy?
From HedgeHogHelp.co.uk :

Of all parasitic diseases, nematode infestations of the lungs are the most
frequent fatal diseases in hedgehogs and claim a high percentage of their lives.

That's from a guy who nurses / over-winters hundreds of hedgehogs a year.

From wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungworm):

Lungworms are parasitic nematode worms of the order Strongylida that
infest the lungs of vertebrates. ... what they have in common is that
they migrate to their hosts' lungs or respiratory tracts, and cause
bronchitis or pneumonia. The lungworm will gradually damage the airways
or lung tissue by inciting an inflammatory reaction inside the tissue.
Ultimately, the parasites survives and reproduce in the respiratory
tissues.

As an infrequent carer, I can atest to the damage and suffering lungworms do to hedgehogs. As wiki says:

The general life cycleof a lungworm begins with an ingestion of infected
larvae. The infected larvae then penetrate the intestinal wall where
larvae migrate into the lungs through the bloodstream. The infected
larvae reside in the lungs until the development into adult larvae. The
eggs of the adult larvae hatch thus producing lungworm. These eggs that
reside in the lungs are coughed up and then ingested back into the
stomach and then into faeces.

So injestion of nematode infected slugs will and does produce lungworm in hedgehogs.

From the Nemasys site (http://www.nemasysinfo.com/):

"Welcome to nemasysinfo, dedicated to pest control using natural,
environmentally friendly nematodes to kill slugs, vine weevils, chafer
grubs, leatherjackets, caterpillars and codling moth using Nemaslug and
Nemasys."

Our soils are already inundated with nematodes (why kids should not be allowed to eat earthworms), so, arguably, putting on a few more might be interpretted as being "environmentally friendly", but is it ecologically sound? Given hedgehogs die from lungworm infections and that they are a vital part of our ecology, can we really kid ourselves that increasing the nematode load in the soil constitutes good practice ecologically?

Have Cane Toads (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4716252.stm)taught us nothing?