snake protection?

[cresty]

Anybody got any ideas about protecting the chicken house/run from snakes? I haven't yet build my house/run but I KNOW I have snakes about and want to build the home with this in mind. Will snakes even hurt the birds if they are grown?

Thanks
Cresty

 

[soonerdog]

I don't have any ideas of how to build a chicken house or run that is snake proof. But I have built several of my brooding pens that are hopefully snake proof. I don't think the snakes will harm any of the adult chickens. The snakes are looking for an easier meal, like eggs, or an occasional mouse about the chicken pen. Now, they will eat the small baby chickens! The best thing to do is to prepare a brooding pen much like a rabbit cage. Use the small rabbit wire, or hardware cloth on it. Build it up on legs and use the small wire with the tiny squares. Snakes cannot get through this type wire. Be sure you have no cracks or holes anywhere. I was having a snake issue also. I built these type brooding pens and they are where I keep my mother hens when they have chicks. I eventually wean the chicks from the mothers and return the mothers to the run.
Snakes are crafty critters! They do not have to eat very often and they will gorge themselves when they do eat. I had a big black snack that probably lived on the farm behind me. When my hens would brood their eggs the snake was very smart to wait. He would wait until the eggs were almost ready to hatch and then come over and eat them literally right from under the hens. Very crafty devil. He knew which eggs to eat, and which to leave. Left the spoiled eggs. I was able to catch him and relocate him a long ways away! Scary as it was, I did it! Johnny

 

[panner123]

I free range my chickens, which makes it impossible to keep snakes out. Last year I lost two hens to rattlers. Wife and a hoe took care or the rattlers. My sitting hens are kept off the ground in an old rabbit hutch with window screen around it. This has kept the snakes out, only way to propect the chicks, those that are hatched out of that hutch are up for all peditors.

 

[mudhen]

Kudos to your wife! Brave woman!!

 

[soonerdog]

My father-in-law says that snakes go for more than just eggs in the chicken yard! He presented me with a 2003 newspaper clipping of an article about a neighbor who had killed a 7 foot 13 inch wide, Canebreak or Timber Rattlesnake. The snake was raiding his chicken pens and eating his adult laying hens. It is the biggest snake that I've ever seen in my life! I tried to post the picture and I can not get it to work. If one of the administrators would not mind posting this picture, I would send the picture to the administrator attached in an email. Just let me know. Johnny

 

[soonerdog]

This is a 2003 picture from a newspaper article that my father in law shared with me about Mr. Farmer and the snake he killed on his farm. Mr. Farmer is a neighbor who had a problem with something raiding his chicken coop. Ever so often he would miss a hen. No sign of anything killing the chickens......just missing chickens. This snake was eating grown standard size laying hens. WOW!!! What a giant! It was 7 feet long and 13 inches wide or around. I hope that none of us ever see anything like this in our chicken yards. Johnny

 

[tricia]

 

[mudhen]

I think they based a few creepy movies on that thing! What a monster!!

 

[Grammi]

OMG, I was just reading about the best dogs for chickens, I want a snake killing dog!!! That snake is my nightmare.
Gail

 

[soonerdog]

You guys, this was a scary snake story. Let me tell it to you. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Farmer go to the same church we do so we know them well. They live a couple of miles out from us.....several farms between us and them. They babysit their granddaughter and she loved nothing more than to go out to the chicken coop with papaw to feed the chickens. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Ways that we could never understand. On the morning that he found this giant snake the little granddaughter, seven years old, had a dentist appointment and was not there to go feed the chickens. He most often would let her get the feed and scatter the corn on the ground for the chickens to eat. When he went to the shed on this morning that she had the dentist appointment, there where he kept the bag of chicken feed was this giant snake coiled up beside the bag of chicken feed. WHEW!!! Thank God that child was not there to go into that shed for the chicken feed on that particular morning! Johnny