Help! SNAKES!! Anybody have any magic fix for a snake population explosion??!

[carolinasculpture]

Hi! I had this same problem last summer and someone suggested "SnakeAway" or something like that. I am pretty sure it is mostly lime, maybe some sulfur, but it has a definite smell to is as well, kind of almost minty. Not unpleasant. Anyway, I removed all the wood chips from my coop as mice could hide in them and installed the plastic grass nest pads for the slanted nest boxes so the eggs roll to the back. Made more of a littler pan out of my poop board and use the SweetPdz and just sprinkle a little SweetPdz on the floor of the coop to make the clean up of any stray poo easier. Then I put down the "SnakeAway" at every possible entrance point, the window sill, the people door, and the chicken door. Every couple of weeks, I add a little more where it has worn away. So far, my chickens show no interest in it and walk right through it and I have not had a snake inside my coop since I did this the first week in August of last summer. I am hoping it contimues to work because we were removing between 1 and 3 black snakes a day up until that point last summer; one day we had 5! Hope this helps. I got the stuff at a hardware store with the garden items. Good luck!

 

[TopHatsNSpats]

COOL idea, Mtnlaurl! That makes a great deal of sense, and it's economical too

CarolinaSculpture, I will see if I can find that at Atwoods. can't hurt! I am definitely tired of these black snakes.

 

[purpletree23]

Are the snakes after the eggs or the chickens? If they are after the eggs get a lot of ping pong balls and scatter them around the perimeter of the run/coop. I've heard that the snakes will ingest the ping pong balls and then die from starvation. My second piece of advice would be to go to a dollar store and purchase cheat cayanne pepper and chili powder or any other strong smelling spice. Mix them together and sprinkle around the perimeter.

Can't hurt. Good luck.

 

[TopHatsNSpats]

Purpletree, they are killing the young babies in the brooders, and have managed to strangle a couple of the older chickens that were just put outside, although apparently were unable to swallow them afterwards. One got into the brooder and ate three chicks, then was too big to get out. I will try your suggestion, by the time I get through doing all this I hope to have the most snake proof farm in the state!

 

[TopHatsNSpats]

Update: I got some of the deer netting, and kind of wrapped it around the legs of my brooder so that no snake could shinny up there without having to pass through it. Looking forward to seeing if that helps! Well, really kind of hoping I won't see any more in the house anyway, but it's an old house so it's real possible they have a way in that I have not found yet. Either way, should be interesting to see how this works, and it doesn't really cause me any trouble in accessing the brooder myself. I will let you know what happens! I want to put more of the netting around the pens outside but I still have some work to do there before I can do that. In the meantime, so far the new geese have killed at least three that I know of. I am loving the geese!

 

[purpletree23]

WOW! Go geese. Sounds like you have a real problem. Not that I doubted you yesterday. Hopefully the netting works. Keep us informed.

 

[Mtn Laurel]

Curious to see if any of the methods helped and if you've had any luck catching more snakes. Let us know!

 

[HippieSilkies]

Snakes can t be around camphor ! They will run away !

 

[HippieSilkies]

http://blog.tsemtulku.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/etc/how-to-prevent-snakes-in-your-backyard.html

 

[miller23832]

We use bird netting to catch snakes. Once caught we release them FAR FAR away from our house. Just wad is up around the fence. We have a pond that the snakes like to come and visit for a free meal so we just wad up some netting and eventually they get caught.