Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

Discussion in 'General chat' started by kimbo.parker, Jun 24, 2009.

  1. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    Greetings,

    I have taken to collecting polystyrene foam for feeding to chooks, which love it.
    my 'preparation' involves throwing over 'packaging', which they then peck to zero.
    I was told that it stops 'feather pecking' in a flock.

    Intrigued; I have conducted an inspection for tell tale signs in their droppings (any bean bag material) - nope,,totally digested.

    I can only speculate at the nutritional value of polystyrene foam. I suspect it is lacking.
    I speculate on 'chicken buoyancy' as well. If it eats say ' a couple of baked bean tins of the stuff and then ( in a controlled experiment) gets thrown in the dam will it get about like a duck?

    I'm not alone in this; people who farm birds for meat also feed them polystyrene foam,,,if something is not recognized as a food, it can't be prohibited as a food. So we have this waste product that chook's eat, no controls over its use, and you eat the chooks :wink:

    I might try and enrich my polystyrene foam with minerals (by pissing on it) before I throw it to the chooks. :D


    regards,
    Kimbo
     
  2. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    dunno kimbo,

    our geese used to like pecking at the stuff, so up front it does not seem to harming your chooks in anyway that can be percieved. but if theya re fully digesting it as you say i would wonder at the chemicals contained within ending up in the eggs in some form, styrene does pong in its own right of chemical type smell. what might their flesh taste like when they end up on the table?

    our chooks never pecked each other as we gave them something to scratch in daily with some kitchen scrap mixed in, plus in the arvo' each day they got free range pick on the grass outside the pen.

    for me not the done thing i guess.

    len
     
  3. milifestyle

    milifestyle New Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    I (hopefully) see the sarcasm behind your point...

    Would you feed it to your kids ?
     
  4. WolfJag

    WolfJag Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    I can't see any good in doing that. I mean, zero nutritional value plus possible chemical uptake. And a good old constipation for the birds! :axe: :axe:
     
  5. milifestyle

    milifestyle New Member

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  6. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    I think there is just so much we don't know about so many things. Perhaps chickens can transmutate Styrofoam into something else completely. Did you know that the reason Japanese steel swords were so strong was not just because of the number of times they folded the steel? Apparently they were able to purify the steel by feeding iron filings through chickens. It seems the chickens were able to remove things like phosphorous impurities! That is the story I once heard (and I can't be bothered chasing up a source for it).

    My point is - you never know! Perhaps in the future waste dumps will be replaced by organic recyclers like chickens! Bacteria and moulds charged with the responsibility of digesting old car tyres? Goats recycling chipboard and plywood? Cows with diamond teeth converting old toasters into milk? The possibilities are endless :wink:

    I'm only half joking too, one day something might evolve that finds our old landfills to be a valuable source of energy. Industrial age coal?

    Anyway
     
  7. milifestyle

    milifestyle New Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    The theory's good. Something i have often thought about myself. Pity the animals used to test the theories though... :|
     
  8. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    mmmm, tricky.
    should I ?

    and, i wasn't being sarcastic - more 'tongue in cheek'.

    i don't feed pig, cow or sheep food to my kids, or chook food. Lets not cloud the issues here :wink:
    the proposal stands,,,
    remember, the meat is already deemed worthy to consume by your very selves; presuming non veg, city based permies that buy chicken meat ( probably free range),,,free range to nible a bit of foam among other things.

    My revelation indicates this is an accepted practise amongst producers. Did you taste the foam in your last wingding man? :lol:
    That I do it with my flock indicates that I include some modern methods in my poultry management.

    Now here is the punch line,, the main thing I feed my chook's is cow shit. No, I do not feed it to my kids, but it is food for thought (clever pun).
    The chickens prosper on the volume of pre digested grain and have a symbiotic relationship to the cow and I.

    I don't loose the cow shit or micro biology, but I run it through a chook first.

    so incase this isn't very clear - I feed my chooks cow shit and polystyrene foam (base diet) supplemented with minerals ( pissed on polystyrene foam) :wink:

    i feed my kids the chooks which don't taste better or worse, but they are healthy free range poultry - the same as you eat?

    regards,
    Kimbo
     
  9. milifestyle

    milifestyle New Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    Do you glow in the dark :D
     
  10. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    I seriously really have missed you Kimbo! The thought of chooks bobbing about on the dam like plastic ducks has me splitting my sides!

    I asked about whether I could toss cow poo in with my chickens in a question about composting and there was no really clear answer from the crowd here. But now I know thanks to you.

    Have you ever examined the entrails of a chook after feeding it polystyrene? Is the answer to the mystery to be found there?

    Piss, poo and packaging. It's almost enough to make you go vegan...
     
  11. pebble

    pebble Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    I get Graham's point, and think we need to look at such options - that nature may have ways of managing pollution that we can't on our own. But I also think you have to weigh that up against the welfare of other species. Does it damage the chook? Sounds like we don't know yet. In which case it's an experiment on animals.

    My other problem with finding 'natural' ways of dealing with persistent pollutants is that it dis-incentivises people from stopping producing them in the first place.
     
  12. janahn

    janahn Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    alright Kimbo, perhaps some producers may allow the odd chicken to peck at the odd box, perhaps accidently, however your claim that producers actually intentionally feed the stuff to chooks is to say the least twisted. So twisted I will give you $100 to name one commercial chicken producer in Australia who intentionally feeds the stuff to chickens. and by the way, did you work out a responce to your assertion regardin salinity and rising groundwater that I previuosly raised before you went off air for a few months.

    Leo
     
  13. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    hello,
    as if I would, even if I could.

    a twisted assertion?,,,I was told by the commercial chicken producer I encountered down at my local dump picking up the stuff...I copied him.
    I wouldn't nark on a local any quicker than I'd contact my local drug action group.
    i am above your cheap offer having renounced the economic rationale....jeeze you money pricks think the world can be bought.
    I assert only obvious things; if it solves a problem, if it is free, if there is no law against it, and with no 'evidence' to make it morally reprehensible, that yes - any one would do it. Shit maybe even a Perma designer in his 'try this, try that' methodology.

    and my response to...salinity, etc. sure mate,,that was why i was not 'present' for a couple of months (working it out :wink: )
    anyway;
    if my memory serves me correctly, you say 'soil collapse' causes salintity and not rising groundwater ....that strikes me as real odd. It is so dam "twisted" that I suggest it is like saying aircraft crashes are caused by plane wreckage...because that is what you see on the ground?

    Mate, soil collapses when it is inundated. The water table rises (many causes), as it rises it disolves salts previously held as solids in the soil. Given that the W.A. wheatbelt was under the ocean, this salt is residual.The ground water becomes saline. The saline ground water and the proceedure I've described is what 'we' know as the issue of salinity.

    We treat salinity by lowering ground water...Think WISSALT,,,interceptor banks. We cut big deep drains which flow like permanent creeks - very salty water.
    We plant trees. We pay attention to management of recharge and discharge areas. We note the Geophysical changes that have turned many rivers back on themselves such that they no longer flow to the coast and drain the country.

    I think I know about salinity ( so does the government - they gave me a grant to fight it :butthead:)
    if any one else wants to rush to my aid jump in, perhaps others would like to help leo with the torch.

    But enlighten me, please.

    regards, Kimbo
     
  14. springtide

    springtide Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    Turpentine and other chemicals turn polystyrene into bad smelling evil goop - in most animal stomachs there is hydrochloric acid to help break stuff down, so i would find some acid (about pH - cheap stuff - not too strong) and put some foam in it - if you get the same bad smelling toxic goop then this is what the chickens are really eating. If nothing happens then the chooks might be ok - if goop - then i would suspect this residue is carcinogenic at best.
     
  15. pebble

    pebble Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    Kimbo, what about toxicity?
     
  16. milifestyle

    milifestyle New Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    I think i taste the goopy texture of sarcasm in your approach, however... if not...

    If same commercial chicken farmer told you to jump off a cliff and flap your arms and you would fly like a budgie would you jump?
     
  17. janahn

    janahn Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    if at first you dont succeed, apply for a government grant.

    I have seen rising groundwater cause salinity. but i think it is only about 1% of the real problem accross Australia.

    What comes up must go down. Soil structure provides for water to enter and wash salt back down. and that would apply to 99% of salted land.

    Q how many hectares do you know of that actually have visible rising water oozing out of them.

    Leo
     
  18. ppp

    ppp Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    For anyone sane reading this post, I would like to assure them that the vast majority of people, including on this forum, would never consider feeding styrofoam to chickens. I think most people would adopt a crude form of the precautionary principle, meaning they would hold off feeding it to their chooks untill it is proven to be both beneficial and not harmfull to the chooks or people eating them.
     
  19. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    sweet jeezies PPP you speak for the majority of ''Sane" readers of these posts..............some call.
    like some perverse pupeteer with your hand up everyone's coo. Well could you get them to do something about their 'carcinogenic' (nod to Springtide) packaging. At least get them to use something a bloke can feed to his chooks.

    and eric, the guy was a frigin chook farmer, a chook farmer given some advice on chook farming........moderate but stop narking! :wink:
    besides that business about residual toxins has hit home. that is the beauty of growing ones own poultry - one has control. I shall stop my unbridled lunacy. It is why I appreciate you guys - People I respect to moderate the more extremes of my personality. :D
    that eric is sarcasm.

    regards, Kimbo
     
  20. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    Re: Polystyrene Foam;any reason I can't feed it to chooks?

    hello Leo

    mate this is the salinity issue in W.A.
    we have signs at the entrances to every country town assuring all that the Fed and State take our rising groundwater problem very seriously.
    repeat - rising groundwater.

    Our local governments' teach 'rising groundwater' through their agencies. School children bring home their groundwater research projects.
    Farmers map and re-veg identified recharge zones. Thousands, Tens of Thousands of hectares of Western Australian agricultural land affected by rising groundwater and salinity. Millions of trees planted in the community response.

    Leo, you have it boxed incorrectly. 'My salinity' , the one to do with rising groundwater,,,that is the biggy.
    Your one, the one to do with soil structure, that is on the level of container gardens.

    I can drive 10 minutes to see an entire landscape of shining white salt crystals, a former productive wheat paddock. It is low country. Discharge zone. Dead trees, saltbush. The soil has collapsed. The soil profile has been inundated for prolonged periods by rising saline ground water, stronger than the ocean.
    Yes, salt water oozes out of the soil at some points. At other drains for the purpose the flow of rising saline groundwater is continuous all year.
    New industries based around saline aquaculture include trout.

    regards, Kimbo
     

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