Snake Attack Last Night! *Update w/question about turkey meds*

[cyanne]

I have two wire dog crates that I was using to put a young BR turkey and his two mutt chick buddies in so they could be assimilated into the flock without getting pecked by the older chickens...one outside in the shade for daytime and one in the coop for nighttime. Well, I locked the turkey and one of the chicks in the coop cage last night (the other chick had been injured during the day somehow and I brought her in to take care of her in the house).

When I went to let them out this morning, only the turkey was still there and the poor thing was TERRIFIED because he was sharing the dog cage with a 3 1/2 ft long rat snake!

It would have slithered away, but the wire was too close together for him to escape with the big lump in his belly from swallowing the other chick. It could have been worse, I guess, since the chick he ate was a mutt that one of my hens hatched and it was already very obviously a rooster so I had planned to find it a new home anyway. Still, I didn't want the poor thing DEAD, especially not like that.

Guess it was lucky that the other chick was injured, or else it would have been in their too...also lucky that it didn't kill the turkey. He probably could not have swallowed it, but he could have killed it pretty easily. The poor turkey did have a gash on the side of his neck/head area so I guess the snake either bit him or scared him bad enough to make him hurt himself trying to escape from the cage.

Since it wasn't poisonous I caught it and took it with me to work to release it FAR away (at least 30 or 40 miles) from my little farm in a nice wooded area. Hopefully it will live a long, happy life there AWAY from my chickens.

 

[Little Ameraucana Mom]

The poor things must of been terrified !!!!

I'm glad the turkey is ok and the one in the house, but what a scarey death for the other one.

 

[cyanne]

Oh yeah, not a good way to go. Technically they don't swallow them alive (not usually anyway) but they do constrict their prey to suffocate it before they eat so it would still not be a pleasant way to go.

Makes me mad, too, because this chick was a random mix of my own flock and he was turning out to look really neat...he was mostly white with weird random patches of color. Would have been a gorgeous rooster. Poor little guy!

Still, I can't really get mad at the snake since he's just trying to make his way and he needs to eat so it's my responsibility to protect my flock from him.

Now I just need to figure out how in the heck to make my coop snake proof...

The problem is that the building is one of those big storage sheds with giant double doors on the front. They had a latch midway up, but it does not hold them firmly closed. Something large like a raccoon could not squeeze in, but it was easy for a snake to slip up through the opening at the bottom of the doors.

Gonna have to put some extra latches on the bottom of each door, I guess.

 

[cluckychick]

I had this happen last week with a guinea I had sharing a cage with my chicks. The snake got in swallowed the guinea then couldn't get back out. He regurgitate the chick and left. Left me with a dead slimey wet guinea

 

[Little Ameraucana Mom]

I"d just relocate the snake to some woods way away from my chickens.

 

[cyanne]

Quote:
That's what I did with the snake that ate my chick today. He is in a nice wooded area with plenty of places to hide and he has a full tummy so he won't need to hunt for a while, I guess.

 

[cyanne]

So it looks like my run of bad luck just isn't over yet, the small wound on the side of my BR turkey's neck looks swollen and there was a little pus coming out. I cleaned it twice this evening and put antibiotic ointment on it, but I am worried about an infection getting worse.

This is my first and only turkey, so I would appreciate any advice on meds.

I have Tylan 50, and I gave him a dose of that (.3cc) even though I was nervous about whether it was safe for turkeys...was more scared of how fast an infection could kill if it got going.

He (or she) is acting okay for now, but there is a definite swollen area around the wound and there was some pus coming out before I cleaned it with watered-down iodine solution.

Any tips? Is the Tylan safe or should I get some other type of antibiotic for him?

FYI he is a pet that we don't plan to eat so I'm not worried about antibiotics making him unsafe to eat...just to know what works best to knock out an infection quickly.

 

[LilPeeps]

Sorry you lost a chick and that your turkey was injured. It's awesome that you released the snake instead of killing it though

 

[cyanne]

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the OTHER chick that was supposed to be in the pen with the turkey when the snake attack happened is also not doing well. She is my poor little EE mutt that hatched with cross beak so she has already had a rough life.

Yesterday she got out of her daytime pen and was hurt somehow...not sure if a bigger chicken pecked her or if a cat or some other predator got hold of her, but when I went to put her in the night-time pen in the coop with the others I found that the skin had nearly been ripped off the entire back of her neck. It is slashed open and was torn away from the tissue beneath up to the back of her head.

Though it looked terrible, she was still running around just as spunky as ever, so I brought her in the house last night, cleaned the wound, and doused it with antibiotic ointment.

If it had not been for this injury, she would have been in the coop last night in the pen that the snake broke into and she probably would have joined her brother in its stomach.

Only now, her wound looks yucky and she was shivering with a fever so I guess my cleaning and nursing were not enough to prevent infection. I cleaned the wound again, this time being less gentle because she had a bunch of stiff pin feathers that were poking into the wound and making it worse so I tried as carefully as I could to remove all of that and then cleaned it again really thoroughly before putting a ton of ointment and giving her a shot of the Tylan (.2 cc). Since her beak makes it difficult for her to eat I also hand fed her with some of the Exact hand-feeding formula mixed with a little poultry drench and some Poly-Visol.

I am hoping to just keep her going long enough for her to kick the infection and start to heal. The poor thing has had the worst luck in life so far. When she was born with the crooked beak I considered culling her, then, since she seemed to be doing just fine I decided to just let her be as long as she was able to thrive and not suffering.

So far she has been growing just as fast as her siblings and seems happy despite her deformity, now this has to happen! Darnit!

 

[cyanne]

Quote:
Well, I figure that there is no use blaming the snake for trying to survive. At least, as far as predators go, I can respect them because they never just go around killing out of bloodlust. You know, the way dogs or raccoons will rip up a bunch of chickens and not even eat most of it?

Nope, the snake just wanted a meal and I left a gap in my defenses. Now I just need to make sure that no more of them can get in.