Can I feed my chickens rollie-pollies?

[SkyKero]

You can get rid of rolly polly's with diatomaceous earth. Not harmful to humans. It also works on ants. My Pill bugs are eating the strawberries! .. I too have heard they are not harmful -- but I don't believe it.

Hope this helps

 

[FluffyChickies]

I have a similar problem, except in my case, the roly-polies are eating my chicken coop. I fed a couple roly-polies to my chickens (alive and by hand *shudder*) and they loved them. Will the chickens be enough to remove the pests?

 

[RonP]

When I repurposed my existing shed, 45+ years old, it was infested with most every insect imaginable.

Including but not limited to carpenter ants, wood mites (pill bugs), centipedes, ants, wasps, bees, stink bugs, spiders...

I did nothing, worked around them.

I'm not sure how long it took, but there currently is not a bug in sight.

I do everything I can to attract new bugs for the birds delight.

 

[Buckenit]

I know this post is a bit old but I am in aww that no one has chickens that will eat the rollie pollies. My 4 week old chicks love them so much that I think this is their favorite snack to eat. I have 11 Rhode Island Reds, they don't like worms that much, they like orange ants, crickets, grass hoppers, slugs and rollie pollies. I will gather around 50 rollie pollies drop them in and literally in seconds they are all gone, they go crazy for them... it's so funny watching them dive in for the mouth full..

 

[Silviaschicks]

One of my chicks just ate a pillbug... by choice. She just snatched it up and ate it.

 

[ILChickenTV]

My layers gobble em up, but my 7 week olds aren’t very enthused by animal protein of any kind (except for boiled eggs.)

 

[mtm85]

I leave logs laying around in the run. Every once in a while I will flip them over and there are hundreds of pill bugs. My hens come running as faat as they can to gobble them up.

 

[jewelg]

I leave logs laying around in the run. Every once in a while I will flip them over and there are hundreds of pill bugs. My hens come running as faat as they can to gobble them up.

Oooh, love this! Definitely adding this activity to our flock’s weekend fun!

 

[SammyJo425]

Rolly Pollys, or pill bugs, are actually crustaceans and not bugs at all. Good luck getting chickens to eat them...none of mine will and neither will my daughter's. They just plain don't like them!

I have an interesting theory on why the chickens won't eat them. They tend to know what is harmful or poisonous to them from my research (first time chicken mama) I have a large population of Rollie poles in my yard so I've been reading about them as well. Turns out Rollie pollies are beneficial because they break down and remove lead, arsenic and cadmium from your garden soil. So they are likely not good for our animals to consume, which is likely why they don't like them. Someone told me to set "traps" and move them to your compose bin, where they will be happy and remove heavy metals from your garden waste and its a win win

 

[saysfaa]

I have an interesting theory on why the chickens won't eat them. They tend to know what is harmful or poisonous to them from my research (first time chicken mama) I have a large population of Rollie poles in my yard so I've been reading about them as well. Turns out Rollie pollies are beneficial because they break down and remove lead, arsenic and cadmium from your garden soil. So they are likely not good for our animals to consume, which is likely why they don't like them. Someone told me to set "traps" and move them to your compose bin, where they will be happy and remove heavy metals from your garden waste and its a win win

I get how they remove lead from the soil - storing it in their bodies.

Doesn't it return to the soil when they die?