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I just found four Leopard Slugs eating the high protein chook food. Are they bad for the garden or good? I know they eat slugs and cat poo which is good but will they eat my peas and lettuces?

Probably. I stick them in the compost bin and let them feast on there. It keeps them happy and they help process the waste. Well that's my understanding.
HTH

Limax maximus is omnivorous. It is of benefit as a detrivore for it cleans up dead plants and fungi,[4] and as a carnivore for it hunts down other slugs with its top speed of 6 in/min.[18] However it is also eats young crops faster than they can grow and so is listed as a major agricultural pest by State Departments of Agriculture from Florida[19]to Oregon.[20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limax_maximus

Oooooh I've never seen one like that before!

Scary!

You should see them mating. I saw it once when I was about eight. There are pictures at the bottom of the wikipedia link there- you know I have never forgotten seeing that as a child and was mildly traumatised-I had wondered if the memory mutated a bit as I got older but no... leopard slugs mating is actually as freaky weird as I remember.

In defence of the poor thing, it doesn't normally attack your crops unless there's nothing else about to eat. We get visits from large ones (assuming the thrushes and frogs didn't get 'em when they were small) and we have hardly any crop damage - certainly none which could definitely be attributed to Leopard Slugs, and never anything devastating.

Be kind to your slimy friends

Mike

MKG that's what I was thinking, I am moving more towards a kind of dictatorial ecosystem in the garden, the starlings and chickens seem to keep the snails and slugs down (but who made my cucumber seedlings disappear? I think it was little slugs or the cat- don't ask abou the cat)and I thought the leopard slugs might eat cat droppings or compost, or old chicken food and then get eaten by chickens or sumfink. I was secretly hoping they wouldn't be a problem...

Jessiebean wrote:You should see them mating. I saw it once when I was about eight. There are pictures at the bottom of the wikipedia link there- you know I have never forgotten seeing that as a child and was mildly traumatised-I had wondered if the memory mutated a bit as I got older but no... leopard slugs mating is actually as freaky weird as I remember.

There's some fantastic video of this on YouTube, from Attenborough's "Life in the Undergrowth": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhVi4Z6CjZk