Snake in the quail pen

[Duck hunter]

Got home from work and went to feed and water, bout had a heart attack to find a 4 foot chicken snake laid up in my quails sand box with one of my quail in his belly. Well he won't be getting anybody else's birds but my question is what are some of you folks ideas on stopping the next one. I have a 10' by 10' aviary pen completely covered with tin. 1" chicken wire all the way around with 2' hardware cloth around the bottom to keep the neighborhood cats from getting them through the wire (yea, had that problem a while back) but this is my first snake in the pen. Around the pen is clean and mowed just need some advice on what has worked for y'all

 

[Fishkeeper]

Chicken wire doesn't keep any predators out. It just keeps chickens in. Snakes will slip through, as will rats, and most determined mammalian predators can tear through it. Quail may also try to squeeze through and get stuck.

He was a four-foot snake, he stretched up past the hardware cloth and got inside.

You'll want to cover the entire aviary in hardware cloth, otherwise rats will probably get in and eat your birds. If you can't get that much, a four-foot-tall band at the bottom, on the outside of the chicken wire, should at least keep snakes out. Any snake long enough to get up past the cloth won't fit through the chicken wire.

 

[Duck hunter]

Ok thanks

 

[JosiePaige]

I watched a snake go thru my hardware cloth yesterday and get into my duck run.

 

[Duck hunter]

I may get some 1/4 inch hardware cloth and put around the bottom and put 1/2 inch above that

 

[Fishkeeper]

That should do the trick. If you have at least 2 feet in height of the 1/4" hardware cloth, no snake small enough to fit through the 1/2" will be able to get over it and squeeze through. If you had chickens, you'd only need 1/2" because a snake that can fit through 1/2" holes is chicken food, but quail aren't so good at killing things to eat.