3.6m Omlet Chicken Run for sale, Brand New in Boxes, Milton Keynes (MK19)

[chocolatedog]

This evening when putting the girls to bed I found a condom wrapper in their outer run - IT WAS NOT MINE! Goodness knows how it got there - but the worrying thing is, it looks as though it had been pecked and the contents extracted. I'e tried every which way of looking at it and hoping that it was already empty, but a human opening it would have opened it in a completely different way...... So now the question: if in the morning light I cannot find any trace of the condom, I will have to assume one or more of my chickens ate it - either in it's entirety, or shredded...... Would they be able to pass it through, and would they come to any harm? As I say, I have no idea how it got there as the run is not right by a gate or road/path - it makes my skin crawl thinking that someone has potentially been in my garden at some point today......

[Olly]

Firstly, the good news ...although possibly not very good news from your hens' point of view, the wrapper was probably brought there by a fox. They move rubbish around like that, I've found sweet wrappers in the back garden - so chances are, it was already empty.

 

Not sure about the second question but lets hope it doesn't arise! They can certainly eat things like polystyrene and it passes straight through them, obviously the contents of this would be more worrying as it could stretch and twist - just keep a close eye for a couple of days.

[Saronne]

I occasionally find strange things in the hens' run, too: marbles (who lost 'em?), lego, and once or twice, small toy dinosaurs in their nesting box! I suspect all of these were my children's toys that were buried long ago in the soil...

 

[craftyhunnypie]

Not fell out of your sons ( if you have a son) pocket?

The only thing I've ever found in my girls nest boxes is an easter egg & a box of milk tray...clever chooks!

Emma.x

[Egluntyne]

Ditto to Saronne's post.

[merlina]

The strangest thing I've found so far is a very very old, very rusty yale-type lock cover (no idea what the outside bit is properly called!). I pretty heavy solid metal thing that looked as though it had been buried for many decades. My hens were living in an ark-type (nest box and perch over top of run) establishment at the time. So why did they drag this heavy thing up the ramp to the nestbox?!

 

To the OP, litter can blow anywhere. Even if they did extract the contents and eat it, i'd think it pretty unlikely that it would unroll inside a hen (they're not that simple to unroll even with the aid of thumbs and so on! ), but, as ever, worth keeping an eye on for a day or two