Chickens, Vegetable Gardens and Heavy Metal Contamination
If your chickens roam the backyard and your soil is contaminated with lead and other heavy metals, there’s a good chance both the chickens and their eggs will have high heavy metal levels. Any fruit and vegetables you are growing may also be contaminated.
Lead toxicity causes a wide range of serious health problems to both adults, children and domestic animals. Other heavy metals do, too, so it’s good to know if your environment is clean or not.
The current Australian guideline for the safe level of lead in standard residential gardens is 300 mg per kg but many suburban, regional and rural areas exceed this figure. If you’re concerned about heavy metals in your soil or house dust you can send samples to Macquarie University VegeSafe who will test them free of charge.
If the test results show you have a problem with heavy metals in your soil, Australian zeolite is the answer. Zeolite takes up and bonds heavy metals and other dangerous substances making them unavailable to plants, chickens, pets and people. Zeo Natural’s Australian Certified Organic garden grade granules can be spread over the floor of the chicken coop and lawn areas, also dug into gardens.
The zeolite granules spread over the chicken coop floor will become a valuable soil additive after it has been loaded with ammonia from the chicken droppings because, when added to the soil, zeolite becomes a storehouse for nutrients. The stored ammonia will be converted to nitrogen and fed to the plants when needed. Zeolite also stores water which is also released to plants when needed. Zeo Natural’s Australian zeolite does not break down so does not have to be replaced, instead it will be a permanent asset in your soil.
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