Just came back from my vacation. Spent a week in a beautiful, small little colonial town called Alamos...and they had poultry (turkeys, hens, ducks and peackocks) and yes, I tried...and succeded.

Feed the animals a mixture of grain and (reject) keshi pearls (3-5 mm). They ate it all up in a jiffy. No questions asked. I could not perform the second part of the experiment tough Never inspected the faeces either (no time, was just having fun and relaxing).

So: the first part is definitively not hard. I can envision using this method to clean the smaller, lower quality natural pearls...but not for the big ones (larger than 6 mm). Maybe it is the way Manuel de Osio intended. But, as I said before...he is no longer here to answer these questions.