Lost my first chicken to snake

[louis]

Well I'm in the country so I suppose it was just a matter of time. Plus I got cocky. After a week in the same coop but separated by chicken wire I introduced some month old Cornish X and NH Reds to my established RIR flock. My RIR's are great about this by the way! Very little picking on the little ones, just a few brief episodes of chasing. Anyways, with everything so peachy I decided to let the little ones range a bit with the olders. Big mistake! They're still small enough where I guess they look so delicious and easy to everyone. By 6pm my dog was barking like crazy behind the coop and look who I found with a little Cornish X half-way down the hatch! He was a Texas Rat Snake I believe (a.k.a Chicken Snake). About five feet long. This is him in a five gallon bucket. Guess I just gotta keep everyone cooped up till they're big enough to not be so easy

 

[kycowgirlchick]

KILL IT!!!

 

[Chicken Fruit]

Did he get a chance to finish eating it? I dont see a chicken in him... He's purty. You could skin him and make a belt.

 

[roosters97]

Quote:
NO!! people are so ignorant,DO NOT KILL IT! relocate it!!!!

 

[kycowgirlchick]

So I am ignorant?
I say kill it because it ate his baby. I know snakes have their purpose.

 

[Tn Gamebirds]

Quote:
NO!! people are so ignorant,DO NOT KILL IT! relocate it!!!!

That was'nt nice , calling people ignorant!!!!

And i agree with her KILL IT. I killed one yesterday at my bird pens

 

[Chicken Fruit]

Chill out you guys. For every snake killed plenty others slither away.

It killed a chicken, not a child.

Its not nice to kill something if theres another option, and its not nice to freak out if someone feels the need to nix a predator.

We should all be nice and agree it would make a nice belt.

Thats what I say.

 

[silentrunning]

I am totally against relocation. I live by a large county nature preserve and it is the dumping grounds for all who have the need to be do gooders and save the world one wild animal at a time. People catch raccoons in their live traps and don’t know what to do with them so they release them in the preserve. They figure it will be a great place for them to live happily ever after. They forget that a couple hundred others have had the same idea over the last several years. The coons have overrun the area and eat every egg that the quails lay. Now there are no quails but plenty of coons. They also bring gopher tortoises and terrapin turtles they find crossing the roads. The lake is now so full of terrapins that it can’t support them. Many are starving and some float up dead on the shore. The gopher tortoises brought in had a fungus that the local ones had no defense against. The county has asked people to just leave them where they are. When the county relocates these tortoises they quarantine them and ensure that they aren’t contaminated before introducing them into a new environment. Do gooders usually don’t do this. We also have huge lizards and invasive fish taking over the environment all over south Florida because caring people decided that it was preferable to release an animal than it was to euthanize it once they were unable to keep it.
You are doing far less damage to the environment by destroying a non-endangered animal than you are if you relocate it.

 

[Tn Gamebirds]

Quote:
WELL SAID......I agree

 

[Mahonri]

While I might not kill it, but I'm also against relocation unless it is wilderness, because then it becomes someone else's problem.