Hello everyone,
like many others, i too have a big problem with slugs in my garden.
Of course i want to get rid of them, but i did not want to use any chemical solutions or beer traps, so i wanted to kill them by myself, and i thought that probably the easiest way to do that would be to just crush them underfoot, and that is what i did practically the whole last year. I even bought a pair of wellies just for that purpose.

Now my question; I have heard that stepping on them can be cruel and that it takes some time for them to die, especially when the boots have a rough profile (which mine have), but i thought that a rough profile would just kill them faster?

Now i don't know if i should keep killing them this way because i don't want to hurt them too much for too long.

Thanks in advance

I think your method sounds good - perhaps step on them twice to speed the process.

Don't know what time of yard/garden you have but if you could keep a couple of ducks (confined and not in your garden itself), just use a garden trowel to flick the slugs to the ducks and they will gobble them up. The slugs will be just as dead but they will be providing nutrition for the ducks. Your wellies will stay cleaner. And duck eggs are delicious.

lelimlelly, wilkommen, (welcome), here is my respectfully submitted advice. To rid the Earth of garden slugs, any of the following could be used in small amounts: Land mines, nerve gas, or dynamite! Do you ever swat a mosquito? Das selma, (same thing). I guess it boils down to: Do you want a garden or a snail farm/ranch? LOL. Additionally, just step on them much harder! Cheers! Guten Tag.

How about beer traps? At least the slugs would die happy. Or hunt them at night and leave them out in the open for birds to eat?

Dead is dead, matters not how they get that way.

When I lived in the Marshall Islands my garden was overrun with slugs and snails. I would go out at night with a light and gather them up into a plastic bag. The bag went into the freezer til they died, and then out in the trash.

Karen's method was my method in California. If I found them during the day, I threw them into the street for the hungry crows. My daughters used to throw them onto the roof so they could bask in the warm California sun.

Slug brains are nothing more than a bundle of nerve cells so I suspect their 'pain' is more of a mechanical response thing (you step on them, the nerves say "pull back we are being stepped on"), not pain as we think of it. Stomp away!

greene said:flick the slugs to the ducks and they will gobble them up. duck eggs are delicious.

Yeah, I wuz gonna say that chickens luv some slugs....
They say... Waste not....

If you are killing slugs, why on earth are you worried about being cruel? That makes no sense.
For me it doesn't matter how I get rid of them, as long as they are gone.

@lelimlley first of all, welcome to the forums This has been a concern of mine as well. I have opted to carefully pick them up with paper napkins or tissue and pop them in the freezer, i don't think they are traumatized, i don't think they feel the cold, i think they just go to sleep and eventually die. The frozen ones go out with the garbage.

To prevent the slugs from eating my plants I use copper tubing or tape. They will cross the tubing sometimes, but there is a chemical reaction that takes place with their tender undersides and i usually find the slug a couple of feet away and very dead. It appears that most of the time they will not cross the tubing. Let me find a photo to show you how i use copper tubing. It is initially somewhat expensive but it lasts forever and with a small tool you can easily make your barriers to fit the space you want to most protect.

Well I would rather be smashed all at once in a hurry and have it over with. Some people say to put salt on them, but basically that is like a chemical burn? I think that is not a good way to go, so I've never did things like that. I use mouse traps if it is needed, (lol for mice, not slugs!) but I would NEVER use a glue trap, I think that is just cruel. I have used scissors before and just cut slugs in half, that didn't seem cruel to me, it seemed fast when I did that.

Beverly, I think we cross posted! Do the slugs die when the freeze or do they come back to life when they thaw out?

@lelimlley here is a photo of a copper barrier. You can make them in just about any size and shape to cover larger areas. Making a circle would be difficult though

First of all thanks for the welcoming words and the advice!
If I am being completely honest and even if it may sound a bit 'cruel' or disgusting, I began to quite like the pop when I stepped on them and it was always a bit satisfactory when I got another one
Glad this isn't a snail lovers community, I think I will continue with my current method of killing them.
Just wanted to know if it's very painful for them but that seems to not be the case

Slugs do not have much of a brain at all,
Not much of a central nervous system. I is way beyond common sense or logic to imagine that they feel much if anything at all.
You could always try garlic and butter like the French do with snails. I can see a humane argument for putting a cat down or a dog or cows and horses, but a slug?! Man oh man, a slug!!!

vitrsna said:@lelimlley here is a photo of a copper barrier. You can make them in just about any size and shape to cover larger areas. Making a circle would be difficult though

Nice, thank you very much! This will be useful so that they won't touch the plants at night! Will definitely try it out once it gets warmer

@Frillylily, the slugs die and do not come back. Many little creatures don't have sensory feelings but all little creatures and big creatures do not want to die and they will use what ever measures they have available to live. Being smashed is to physically damage them, being wrapped carefully in a napkin or tissue is not to physically harm them and the freezer would first put them in a sort of hibernation and then they would die in their sleep so to speak. That's is just the way i feel best about things, but drowning in beer doesn't sound so bad either. Honestly, beer has never worked for me to keep the slug population down. The beer always disappears and so do the slugs. I must have been doing something wrong. Then i learned about copper and i haven't had slug problems since.

I was just asking because I have had goldfish freeze solid and come back after thawing, wondered if the slugs are that way too.

BigBill said:Slugs do not have much of a brain at all,
Not much of a central nervous system. I is way beyond common sense or logic to imagine that they feel much if anything at all.
You could always try garlic and butter like the French do with snails. I can see a humane argument for putting a cat down or a dog or cows and horses, but a slug?! Man oh man, a slug!!!

I don't think this is true whatsoever and is a myth that some animals can't feel. If you barely even touch a slug it will respond, they feel, they are aware they have been touched. It has been proven that frogs, lobsters, fish, octopus, ect, they all feel, vividly. People just like to come up with excuses for what they do I guess.