Black snake!!

[feather leg farms]

My dad had found a black snake under a brick near his shop and carried it down to the woods below our house, well either it came back or it's his twin!! LOL

Well a few days later I walked in the coop door and stepped on something rubbery, look down and there is a snake flopping around!! He was in the middle pen, where my black show silkie was that i had just gotten. She must have pooped herself!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Sir Birdaholic]

Sounds like the egg hunt is on for the snakes.

 

[feather leg farms]

There is a little whole in the cochins pen and there was one in the hattrick/amber waves pen! They haven't come back though!

 

[Sir Birdaholic]

Sprinkle sulphur around the pen, snakes will avoid it.

 

[mmwinget]

That may be a stupid question but I am new to chickens (and love them by the way!!) but will a black snake not eat/kill the actual chicken?? Will they only go for the eggs? Also, I have heard great things about sulfur. Where do you buy the type of sulfur that you put out? Thanks!

 

[thefooladifamily]

I would have passed out right there on the spot. I don't know what I'm going to do if I see a snake in our coop. AghhhhHH

 

[Jaguaress]

Y'all aren't that far from me. If y'all catch it - or however many - I'll come get it(them) to release on my 9 acres. Just let me know.

Pillowcase is a good way to store them, tied with a zip tie, but be careful that they don't get overheated cos it can kill them.

And yes, some snakes will go after eggs only, while others will go after chicks or even older birds. It just depends on the snake and its mood at the time.

 

[genuck]

I found one in my living room last week, 5 ft black rat snake. Stuck in my King pigeons cage. Neither the birds or the dogs took any notice. >.<

 

[vscampbell]

I am a reptile hobbiest and have been for 40 years.... so I have a lot of experience with snakes.

No North American snake can eat an adult chicken, or even one that is a few weeks old... newly hatched chicks, yes.

Black Snakes and all other similar snakes are mostly mouse eaters, when they are hanging out around barns and chicken coops they are looking for food, which will mostly be mice and rats... when you kill a snake you increase the number of rats that are available to eat your chickens... and rats cause a lot more trouble than a snake.

It is true that Black Rat snakes, Bull Snakes, Corn Snakes, etc will occasionally eat eggs, but they are not easily eaten by these animals and I would gladly trade an occasional egg lost for the dozens of rats that one snake will eat in a month..... most often these snakes will find the rat nests and eat the babies, so one meal means a loss of 8 or so rats. Most probably the snake is looking for baby birds and when they find none they will eat the mice and rats they do find... rather than trying to eat eggs.

If a snake is venomous, certainly kill it... but I would encourage everyone to avoid killing non venemous snakes because they help far far more than they harm... One dead snake will mean an increase in mice and rats by around 100,000 plus in a year.... when you figure that mice and rats breed every month, and so do the babies after they are about 4 months old, and so on and so on..... you figure out the math on the number of mice and rats a snake will eat.... being 2 or 3 a week.... or 2 or 3 litters of mice a week at 8 in a litter.....

 

[vscampbell]

And I'm sorry to contradict others, but you can forget about Sulpher or hemp ropes or any other kind of obstruction. Snakes don't care about things like that..... again, I have owned and bred many thousands of snakes over the past 40 years and am a past board member of the Pacific Northwest Herpetological Society.