An uninvited guest

[MACCanadianCoop]

Time to patch up the hardwire cloth!

 

[Acre4Me]

Anytime you have an unexpected guest, it’s there for a reason-usually food. So, it will eat eggs or chicks or rodents. Missing any eggs? No? Then maybe there are rodents about, and this is a nice shady spot for it to sleep. But, grown chickens won’t be eaten by this snake. The chickens, dinosaurs and omnivores that they are, might just eat the snake if given a chance.

 

[Franklinridgefarms]

Chickens can and will kill small snakes, but not big ones. Big rat snakes around 5ft or more can absolutely kill a mature chicken, they are not able to swallow them though.
They go after the chickens at night while they are on the roost and not as able to see and get away.

 

[texsuze]

I pulled a rat snake out of my chicken coop many years ago (those holes are now covered!). Another one I found in the barn during my nightly "Nite Check"-he/she had eaten a nest egg which had gone missing a couple days before. Right now we have a large, brown snake living at the barn under some landscape rocks. Don't know the species; I just call him a Texas Brown Snake.... Anyway, they do a good job of helping mice disappear, so I try to leave them alone, as long as I can keep tabs on them.