I caught my egg thief, now what?

[schellie69]

I would move the snake to my garden My DS caught 2 garter snakes last year I put them in my garden area to help with the mice problem seems we have a great many mice the last few years. My 2 dogs also catch mice and so do my chickens so the only place for the mice was my garden so placed a few snakes in there. No more mice.

P.S. I found my egg stealer it was a couple of squirrels.

 

[Stingrayg4]

I've never seen a garter snake that's anywhere near big enough to eat a chicken egg. I have to believe that this one has been misidentified. I leave non-venomous snakes alone, myself. They eat lots of stuff I'd rather not have around. It's easy for me to say that though, I've never had a problem with snakes eating my eggs. I'm pretty sure my roosters would make short work of any serpent that got that close to the hen house.

-S

 

[Chicky_Baby]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I was too late to get a good pic as something ate most of him during the night but it does appear I misidentified the snake. It may have been a yellow rat snake from what I remember it looking like. I guess I don't have much of a future studying snakes. The hens did finish off what was left of it. The down side of this is that I now have to worry about whatever ate it.

Edited to add... There were what looked like small pieces of crushed semi digested shell in the remains. I am not 100% sure but it sure looks like it was eating eggs. Do the totally void their last meal before eating again or would it have had remains from previous dinners? When I first saw it there didn't appear to be an egg bulge so it would have to an old meal if it were eggs at all. As you can tell my snake knowledge is not exactly something to write home about.

 

[FireTigeris]

The acid they make will melt nearly anything - but I was guessing yellow rat from the size description...

Yellow rats are also called chicken snakes!!!