What happens if you eat slug pellets

However, how often do you consider the safety of other living beings that might be affected by slug pellets? We completely understand the frustration gardeners have.

Slug pellets can appear striking to common pets such as dogs and cats. Their curiosities are often explored using their mouths. Bad news, considering the formulation of slug pellets resembles that of dried cat or dog food. All of which is not ideal when slug pellets are extremely poisonous. Even just a couple of slug pellets would be enough to kill or at least cause severe illness to pets.

Despite being a threat to wildlife, slug pellets are still a popular method of gardening pest control. Birds and hedgehogs are attracted to slug pellets for similar reasons to those of domesticated pets. Because these animals tend to be smaller, even the slightest amount of exposure to the poisonous pellets cause prove fatal. Although over the years the population of slugs has increased, the population of their predators — hedgehogs, frogs and wild birds has decreased by a third since There could be several reasons for this.

However, given the dangers of slug pellets, we imagine they only contribute to the depopulation issue. The blue colour of slug pellets is used to make them unappealing to birds and other wildlife. It, in fact, does the opposite when it comes to young children and toddlers. Whether you garden at a local allotment or in your backyard, consider the chances of young children coming across slug pellets, playing with them and even potentially eating them.

This could be just as fatal as any of the above circumstances. Consider how you store slug pellets. Some safer alternatives include crushed egg shells, coffee grounds and wool pellets. However, these methods can have varying results. As a result, they can no longer eat and slowly starve to death. It usually takes a few days for them to die. The bodies release a smell of decay into the garden, and this attracts even more slugs from around the neighborhood.

Although allowed in organic farming, iron III phosphate is a hazardous chemical substance that is not entirely harmless to humans. This substance can also pollute drinking water, so it must not enter drains, surface water or groundwater supplies.

After slugs and snails have eaten or touched metaldehyde pellets, their bodies produce excessive amounts of slime and they slowly dehydrate as they try to flush the toxin out of their system.

If it has been raining or the ground is very moist, metaldehyde can become ineffective as the slugs can take in enough water to compensate for their losses. They must then be collected; otherwise, their smell will attract new slugs from around the neighborhood.

This might also be true for North America and other parts of the world and it might have an effect on general health. Please notice: it is better not to use beer traps!

Used a lot during the s, methiocarb has now been banned in most countries because it is fatal to humans and kills many beneficial animals and pets. They attract slugs and snails from around the neighborhood into your garden and directly onto the vulnerable beds where you are meant to sprinkle them. The attractants that are not eaten can seep into the soil and will attract slugs and snails even after the baits become invisible. Many people underestimate the fact that the smell of carrion is a strong attractant to most snails and slugs.

Therefore, slug pellets directly — because they contain baits — and indirectly — because they produce carrion — attract even more slugs from neighboring areas. If it is true that slugs can smell e. One significant setback of iron phosphate pellets is that they kill slugs and snails slowly within a couple of days. As a result, the natural cycle of reproduction is disturbed, which leads to an out-of-the-ordinary slug boom a few weeks after using the pellets.

Their eggs, young, and even adult slugs and snails are on the menu of all kinds of predatory animals. However, it is true that natural enemies have declined in population or have become extinct for several reasons. Often, they have suffered from the use of pesticides such as insecticides, herbicides, and molluscicides. If invasive slugs or snails enter an ecosystem for the first time, it might take a while for the snail eaters to recognize them as a potential snack — but after a while, they will.

When poison is used to kill a prey population, the balances that exist between hunter and prey populations everywhere in nature cannot occur. There are, for example, many insects, such as the ground beetle, that specialize in hunting slugs and snails. Government advice to farmers too pretty well amounts to "get big or get out".

The NFU takes the same approach. Yet it's clear that industrial agriculture, vast fields of monoculture that are wildlife deserts, are not sustainable. We need to work towards a new form of agriculture, one that works both environmentally and economically to give us secure, affordable food supplies — and which by bringing down the scale and reshaping the landscape could also provide many more jobs along the way.

And for gardeners doing battle with slugs? There are alternatives, too: beer traps for one. And if a dog gets into a beer trap, well you've just got a happy dog, unlike the case with metaldehyde pellets. Wake up to the danger of slug pesticides. Metaldehyde in slug poison and fertilisers is showing up in drinking water, while natural garden predators are dying out. A garden slug hiding under a leaf. Pesticides used to kill slugs contain toxic chemical metaldehyde, which is finding its way into drinking water.

While they may look harmless, many varieties of the pellets contain a chemical called metaldehyde which can make pets seriously ill and, in some cases, prove deadly. Even small amounts can cause significant poisoning and severe signs, including incoordination, tremors and convulsions, can occur within an hour.

Dogs or cats who have eaten the pellets should be seen by a vet urgently as only rapid treatment can save their life. One dog who tragically did not survive ingesting slug and snail pellets was Japanese Akita Boris. He died within hours of coming across the pellets during a walk in the park.

According to mum-of-two Jackie, year-old Boris visited the park at 5. He was taken to Vets Now but, by then, it was too late. Vets Now has 60 clinics and pet emergency hospitals across the UK that are open through the night, seven-days-a-week, and day and night on weekends and bank holidays, to treat any pet emergencies that may occur.