Black Snakes in my chicken coop!!!!!

[MichaelZ13]

Wow, you folks down south have some serious snake problems! I think there are about 5 snakes on my whole 30 acres, with perhaps three 6-inch fire snakes and 2 garter snakes. Come live up north and you won''t have those snakes. Just winter 6 months out of the year!

 

[Gloryjasmine]

Wow, you folks down south have some serious snake problems! I think there are about 5 snakes on my whole 30 acres, with perhaps three 6-inch fire snakes and 2 garter snakes. Come live up north and you won''t have those snakes. Just winter 6 months out of the year!

Lol yup that's exactly what I was going to say. Y'all don't have the snake issues because even the snakes think it's too cold to live there!!

that and the tax laws......$. I'd rather see a black snake any day over the 61/2 ft timber rattler I killed last year during hunting season!!! Was walking along the trail my husband and I cut,looking for snakes!!! And deer of course. We are avid hunters. This one was so camouflaged and coiled up asleep. Thank the Lord because my next step would've been on his head!!!! No rattle. I jumped about 2 ft back and loaded my 9 ruger. If he'd been awake.....I'd be the one sleeping. Permanently. Thank you Jesus!!! Thanks for your post! God bless.

 

[kwhites634]

Wow. Very well. Now, would he want to just be taking one at a time? Don't they normally kill multiple?

I'm guessing coons! They're incredibly smart.
One way to find out for sure is to set up a trail camera (commonly used by deer hunters & readily available from Bass Pro, Cabela's, Spotsman's Guide, Walmart, etc.). It'll detect any movement within its range, 24/7.

I also employ a Havahart trap. I've trapped several coons, a possum or two, even a skunk once. I Originally bought it to catch coons (which I'd detected on my trail camera) that were stealing corn from my deer feeder.

You could also be fighting weasels and/or rats. When I was raising & training bird dogs I kept several quail in a recall pen to work my dogs on. Went to check on them one day & discovered them all dead in the pen; no blood, no scattered feathers, no missing parts, nothing. I figured a weasel or rat had gotten in thru the recall chute, killed the birds for the pure pleasure of it( weasels are famous for that) and exited the same way it got in.

 

[kwhites634]

My pleasure, but the real thanks goes to those who never made it home. Lest we forget.

The door that I wasn't closing was for the bigger coop. I'll link you to my thread (link here) I started when I was building the run for our pre-fab coop. We have a little Agri Supply coop and then we have our "mansion", if you will. Here's a picture.



So we have the smaller coop next to it so that we could give the pullets some time in front of the hens. Ya know, "look, but don't touch". Anyway, that coop is more secure so I don't feel like it's a risk to have them in there. The window and vent has hardware cloth tacked in to prevent any predators. I like it (the coop). Just wish I had the carpentry experience to have done it myself and maybe save a few bucks. I figured the run I could do myself since it's pretty straight forward: put posts in, attach wire, attach horizontal 2x4's... and you're done! lol. I've yet to put a top covering on. We have too much tree coverage for me to worry about hawks, plus there are a ton of crows around our backyard.

Anyway, feel free to comment on my thread regarding my coop/run building. Don't want to take the focus from this thread.

To add, regarding the predator we have, I laid down a layer of dirt and packed it smooth in front of the nesting box. I have the pullets inside the house, in our laundry room, so they are safe, but hopefully the predator leaves a good enough track indention for me to identify it. It's just too late this evening for us to hook up any electric fence wiring (which is what we're going to do in conjunction to adding hardware cloth over the chicken wire on the run).

ETA: our neighbor does have two outdoor cats. I have seen them snooping around our fence line, but not close to where it was concerning. We've lived here since January and we have even had the chickens free range constantly for the first several months because we had used the shed on our property as their living area. Risky, yes, but nothing happened that whole time. Couple times we forgot to close the shed door, but they were never attacked or anything. So, would an outdoor cat try and snatch a chick up in the middle of the night? Or morning before the sunrise? Especially if it hasn't shown any aggression in the past 7 months?

We had a barn cat for years. She spent the majority of her time in the adjacent chicken house, and never once bothered any birds. Maybe I was just lucky.

 

[Daisy5]

Glad i dont have snakes anywhere near my chicken!

 

[Gloryjasmine]

My pleasure, but the real thanks goes to those who never made it home. Lest we forget. The door that I wasn't closing was for the bigger coop. I'll link you to my thread (link here) I started when I was building the run for our pre-fab coop. We have a little Agri Supply coop and then we have our "mansion", if you will. Here's a picture. So we have the smaller coop next to it so that we could give the pullets some time in front of the hens. Ya know, "look, but don't touch". Anyway, that coop is more secure so I don't feel like it's a risk to have them in there. The window and vent has hardware cloth tacked in to prevent any predators. I like it (the coop). Just wish I had the carpentry experience to have done it myself and maybe save a few bucks. I figured the run I could do myself since it's pretty straight forward: put posts in, attach wire, attach horizontal 2x4's... and you're done! lol. I've yet to put a top covering on. We have too much tree coverage for me to worry about hawks, plus there are a ton of crows around our backyard. Anyway, feel free to comment on my thread regarding my coop/run building. Don't want to take the focus from this thread. To add, regarding the predator we have, I laid down a layer of dirt and packed it smooth in front of the nesting box. I have the pullets inside the house, in our laundry room, so they are safe, but hopefully the predator leaves a good enough track indention for me to identify it. It's just too late this evening for us to hook up any electric fence wiring (which is what we're going to do in conjunction to adding hardware cloth over the chicken wire on the run). ETA: our neighbor does have two outdoor cats. I have seen them snooping around our fence line, but not close to where it was concerning. We've lived here since January and we have even had the chickens free range constantly for the first several months because we had used the shed on our property as their living area. Risky, yes, but nothing happened that whole time. Couple times we forgot to close the shed door, but they were never attacked or anything. So, would an outdoor cat try and snatch a chick up in the middle of the night? Or morning before the sunrise? Especially if it hasn't shown any aggression in the past 7 months?

We had a barn cat for years. She spent the majority of her time in the adjacent chicken house, and never once bothered any birds. Maybe I was just lucky.

Where are you located,if you don't mind?

 

[Gloryjasmine]

Glad i dont have snakes anywhere near my chicken!

I'm glad too! It sucks.

 

[critterkeeper25]

I have caught 2 black rat snakes and 2 black racers in my nest boxes so far this summer. I caught them all and relocated them to an uninhabited wooded area about 20 miles away from where our home is. They were pretty fat from eating our eggs. They were getting into the coop by way of the automatic hen door. There is no way to prevent that from happening. They were also climbing the interior and resting in the soffits in our coop, digesting I suppose. Our chicken run only has chicken wire to about 4 feet up from the ground. The whole run is built of bamboo that we have growing in our back yard. Think of prison bars with 1 inch gaps on the sides and top. It's enoug to keep most predators out, but not the snakes. I guess that if we get tired of losing eggs or decide to raise more chicks, we will have to enclose the entire run with wire. We were trying to cut costs. Lessons learned I guess.

I don't kill the snakes I find. My father taught me to treat them with respect and to handle them properly. Plus they are non-venomous and pose no real threat to myself and my family other than my chickens. In all 4 instances, there has been a hen in the next box adjacent to the one the snake was in. We have large hens, so I guess that the snake figured that eating the eggs was easier than trying to tackle a big hen.

I am sorry for your losses. I hope that you can figure out how to keep your chickens safe from snakes. As for the moth balls, I guess that they aren't within reach of your chickens? They would certainly poison your hens/chicks if they ever consumed them as they are poisonous if consumed by people. I don't know about your chickens, but mine will try to eat just about anything that they see.

 

[critterkeeper25]

I'm guessing coons! They're incredibly smart.
One way to find out for sure is to set up a trail camera (commonly used by deer hunters & readily available from Bass Pro, Cabela's, Spotsman's Guide, Walmart, etc.). It'll detect any movement within its range, 24/7.

I also employ a Havahart trap. I've trapped several coons, a possum or two, even a skunk once. I Originally bought it to catch coons (which I'd detected on my trail camera) that were stealing corn from my deer feeder.

You could also be fighting weasels and/or rats. When I was raising & training bird dogs I kept several quail in a recall pen to work my dogs on. Went to check on them one day & discovered them all dead in the pen; no blood, no scattered feathers, no missing parts, nothing. I figured a weasel or rat had gotten in thru the recall chute, killed the birds for the pure pleasure of it( weasels are famous for that) and exited the same way it got in.

I agree with you about the raccoons. They ARE very smart. My sister-in-law use to have trouble with them getting into her garbage cans so she strapped the lids down with bungee cords. She heard a commotion outside the next night and looked out to find the raccoon sitting on an adjacent can with other can lid in "hand" stretching the bungee as far as it would go and it was reaching into the opened can with the other "hand" and pulling out garbage! Those raccoons were huge from feasing on garbage their entire lives. Our nest box lid doesn't have a latch either, something I keep harping about to my hubby. It's heavy, but I still have visions in my mind of those raccoons my sis-in-law told me about and can picture one doing the same thing with our nest box lid.