So the bill allows alligators captured in other states to be imported to become fowl disposal units here. Skeptics have raised the question of what ultimately happens to the farm alligators. Derrell Shipes, who supervises wildlife and fisheries policy at the S.C. Natural Resources Department, said his agency agreed to help the poultry industry determine whether alligators are efficient dead-chicken disposals. Gov. Jim Hodges said he has not seen the bill and doesn't know whether he would sign it. And he predicted that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will one day prohibit burying the birds.
Alligators can digest bones, beaks and feathers.
Their muscular jaws do not chew food, but simply rip and tear their prey into chunks they can swallow. Shipes said some of those farmers were grinding the dead chickens into mush to allow the hatchling alligators to feed on the chickens as well.