Snail/slug pellets

Metranil_Vavin

This is my first time posting on this part of the forum, so apologies if it has been asked before!

My flower beds have been munched alive by snails, so I put down some pellets yesterday evening.

Went out there just now and there are snails literally everywhere!:eek:

Is that essentially what the pellets do..attract snails and slugs and then poison them? Do the snails crawl away again or is it a case of collecting up all the dead ones and getting rid of them?

The snails in my garden at the moment look alive still, but there are loads more than I ever usually see.

Thanks for any insight!

antw23uk

Personally if you can see them then you should be collecting them up and disposing of them. Now you have put poisen down I cant recommend you take them to a local park for the local hedgehog!

I catch and kill every few days when i have a spare few minutes and if its rained overnight i make the effort to spend five minutes walking round the garden first thing in the morning collecting anything using the lawn as a freeway.

Last year, like you, they ate EVERYTHING growing and i gave up but this year I have been so on the ball im bordering obsessive but its really working and the effort is seriously paying off :T

Metranil_Vavin

Thanks Ant, I have been out there once today and moved a load, and will go out again a bit later and do so again.

Do they actually eat the pellets and then die?

Farway

Once poisoned they stay poisoned & never recover
I just leave them where they are, but it is personal preference TBH

I_have_spoken

Do they actually eat the pellets and then die?

Yes. If possible collect them and chuck into bin so other animals like hedgehogs don't eat them.

Linda32

You do sometimes see a lot more snails when you put the pellets down. I use pellets quite often and now more than anything I find empty shells. Not broken when birds have done the job for me, quite intact just empty. I presume they sort of dissolve :eek: Either way the pellets work.

Cally_Smart

I don't bother with the pellets,I try and collect them up when I see them & take them far away from my garden. I found when I did use them the slugs ate the pellets and had a last meal of the plant I was trying to protect anyway before they did their job ! I try & limit the amount of chemicals on the soil now & have baby blackbirds in my garden who could eat the dead slugs who had ingested the slug pellets!
I just remember a few years ago I was in a boyfriends(at the time ) garden.He started picking up the odd snail & chucking them over the fence into a neighbours garden who he assumed was at work.
"We've got quite enough of those over here already thanks" OOps!
He was there all the time !

Leif

According to studies snails thrown into a neighbour's garden simply make their way back home.

[Deleted User]

My father in law always chatted them up in the pub to collected all the beer that came out of the pipes first, put it in a saucer and the slugs would drown. No chemicals as such

Bunnygirl

Leif wrote: »

According to studies snails thrown into a neighbour's garden simply make their way back home.

My neighbour drops them over the wall onto my hanging basket :mad: If I dont get to them in time you can see them walking back up the wall making their way back.

A._Badger

shrimper1 wrote: »

My father in law always chatted them up in the pub to collected all the beer that came out of the pipes first, put it in a saucer and the slugs would drown. No chemicals as such

Beer is a chemical. More precisely, many of them.

Whatever happened to science education in our schools? Not meant personally - just an observation about the chemophobia of the greenies.