Chickens must be smart, at least as slugs, because they allways eat the most treasured bulbs! Yes, I tried wood ash, Iris reticulata 'Purple Gem' is just as tasty as they find their way to them. Our snails are "miner" ones. They spend most of their tme in the soil, making routs in the clay, and they eat many things. Hey, not bad! I like citrus, so I try this method! Thank you John. For ammonia: We have a lots of NH4-NO3 fertilizer. I made a big hole in the garden for ferns and I get the ferms out of it and started to fitt it up with soil, but than I saw some slugs. I poured about 5 liter of this fertilizer right onto them, and than I covered it with soil and press it well (slugs were about 60 cm (2 feet) deep). 3 days later slugs came out of that place... But the slimey layer came down from them. But they remake it in 5 minutes... Now I only have to make an experiment which works here the best! I hope I'll run out of them sooner than the experiment ends... :) Anyway, thank you all for the posts! Bye, J ----- Original Message ----- From: Theladygardens@aol.com To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 8:47 AM Subject: Re: [pbs] snails & slugs & chickens Chickens are not smart enough not to eat sluggo and the sluggo does kill them. It's a really horrible death. Three of my chickens ate Sluggo. 1 died in a day, another a week later and the third didn't die for 3 weeks. I'm not sure how we determine that birds are smarter and won't eat it. My chickens were large healthy chickens. It makes me wonder how much it would take to kill a small bird or a lizard. If you read the fine print on the package it says to use a very small amount spread out thinly. Most people don't read anything on the package except the large print advertising on the front. I tried talking to people pushing Sluggo at a Nursery Trade Show and they didn't want to hear it. They just told me I shouldn't be feeding Sluggo to my chickens. Of course I didn't intentionally do that. I left a sealed bag laying in the garden for about 1/2 hour not realizing the chickens would peck through the bag and eat some. They could have eaten 1/2 to 1 cup between the 3 of them before I went back to get the bag and found them there. Carolyn <BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com/. _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php