POWDERED cement and live chickens are just two of the odd escaped lorry contents that featured on a Top 10 Strangest Spills list.

Highways England, which manages the motorway network, compiled the list to highlight the challenges in faces in clearing up the carriageway and the hours of disruption to motorists that such clean-ups can cause.

Among the weird and wonderful substances its staff have encountered include animal blood and argon, toilet roll and toxic waste, and washing up liquid and wine.

The poultry escaped when a lorry on the M62 hit the central reservation and shed its load of 6,000 chickens in crates in the early hours of May 14 2014.

Traffic was stuck for hours after the crash on the eastbound carriageway between Junction 11 for Birchwood and 12 for Eccles.

More than 1,000 of the animals died but rescuers were able to save thousands more after searching the surrounding areas in the dark for several hours afterwards.

Just over two months later, on the southbound stretch of the M6 near Lancaster between Junctions 33 and 34, a crash between two lorries and a car resulted in powdered cement mixing with diesel and engine oil.

Highways England workers faced a race against time to clear the mess up before the mixture started to set on the carriageway on one of the hottest afternoons of the summer.

Specialist teams were called out to help clear the road and traffic officers worked with North West Motorway Police to check on drivers stuck in the resulting queues and distributed bottles of water.

It eventually took 18 hours to make the motorway safe enough to reopen.

Melanie Clarke, director of customer operations at Highways England, said: "Our roads are among the safest in the world, and safety is our number one priority.

"Our role is to ensure we clear incidents quickly and keep traffic moving to minimise delays. We work closely with the emergency services, in challenging circumstances, to try to keep drivers moving after an incident.

"We know drivers get frustrated when their journeys are disrupted but we do all we can to clean the road quickly after an incident – and it’s often much more complicated than simply moving the vehicles off the road to reopen it.

"That’s why it can often take longer for us to safely reopen roads when a potentially dangerous substance is spilled in an incident.

"Our teams expect the unexpected, but of course, when you’re dealing with ten tonnes of salmon, dangerous toxic chemicals, or emulsion paint, the clean-up operation is somewhat complicated."

The list was drawn up after 24 tonnes of lard closed the M11 in Essex.

Ordinary spills involving diesel and milk are the among the most demanding clean-up operations because these liquids rot the road surface and every remnant must be jet-washed away - or in extreme cases the asphalt has to be re-laid.