We're in Texas and rural, about 15 miles out of town. Our house is on the back of a 30 acre hay field. We have had free range chickens for about 5 years. We also have goats and they have a very good relationship with each other. One laying box is in the goat barn and another in the feed shed. The one in the goat barn has 3 compartments but of course they all want to use a specific compartment. Occassionally my husband would find a rat snake in there and we knew they got eggs sometimes. Last year it became a problem. My husband got so aggrivated that he put a ceramic egg in the nest. Then the egg went missing. So he put another with the same results. A friend told him it was more economical to use golf balls. Our grandson used to pickup golf balls at the golf course and had a whole bucket full. So my husband got some golf balls to put in the nests. We had those go missing also. So he decided he would just see how far that went and he put 3 golf balls in the nest. Several days passed then he came in and said all 3 golf balls were gone. He continues to use the golf balls but only one in the nest. One day he rushed in and got his gun and said there was a snake in the nest box. That snake was well over 6 foot. He ended up killing 3 in two days. All of them were very long. We never lost any hens to the snakes but we lost a lot of eggs. One of the snakes had a bulge in it so they cut it open and it was golf ball and an egg.
