Snake season begins

[fowltemptress]

Rooting around in the barn, setting up the feed for horses, goats, and sheep, and I come across a small rattlesnake. Since he's in the barn and not in the woods where he's supposed to be, I kill him and find a small mouse inside him.
Same barn, an hour later . . . nearly step on a rat snake. Since he's non venomous, he gets shoved aside and left to clear out the rest of the mice that the rattler left.
I suppose it's time that I start wearing shoes again. It makes me want to move the hen coop into the goat pasture, because the girls have a tendency of getting a little too freaked out when a snake comes to visit. Poor things.

 

[Scrambled Egg]

because the girls have a tendency of getting a little too freaked out when a snake comes to visit. Poor things.

I can totally relate to that!!!!

 

[Chickaroo!]

I've only had my chickens since Oct. and have never had them before that. So, I was wondering...will snakes hurt chickens? My dad said when he was a kid and had chickens, theirs would eat the snakes. He may have just said that though, because he knows snakes are my absolute biggest fear.

 

[newnanchic]

This girl gets freaked out when the snakes come to visit as well.... The only good one is a dead one!!! (And yes that is just my 2 cents worth)..

 

[fowltemptress]

If they aren't poisonous, snakes can't hurt chickens. They may eat the chicks, or if it's an egg eater you could lose some eggs. If it's a small snake, like the size of a green snake, our hens are fine, but any bigger and the chickens go clucking and zooming around the edges or the yard as though they have rockets attached to their bums, and then they will quit laying for a couple of days because they worked themselves into such a tizzy. I'd scold the poor little snakes for scaring them, but they're usually looped around like a garden hose and acting like they'd rather be anywhere else than in a pen full of feathered maniacs. I never know who to feel more sorry for.

 

[arlee453]

Another good question is 'will chickens hurt the snakes?'

Answer: most definately - if they are small enough. Watched my girls scratch up and eat a baby racer snake last fall. Fought over that thing like you woudn't believe. They must have though it was a 'super' worm or something.

 

[fowltemptress]

Poor little racer . . . I wish there was a way to screen out some of the animals chickens will eat. We seem to get a plague of toads every now and then, and the hens will get horribly sick off of them. The dogs foam at the mouth and eventually learn that ingesting a toad will make you ill, but the chickens never learn.

 

[Chickaroo!]

So, if my chickens eat a small snake, it won't hurt them? The thought of that makes me want to vomit!! YUK!

 

[Yonaton]

My chickens don't cere if there's a snake around or not. If it's small enough, yes, they'll eat the poor thing. Most of the time I've never got to them in time to see if it was a young/small poisonous one or not before they ate it, but since none have died, I guess they can survive eating them.

If anything a snake should be watched for is just eating eggs and small chicks. Sometimes a good-sized rat snake will think it can gulp down a young pullet/cockerel and sometimes it turns out the snakes eyes were bigger than its belly (all that meaning - when my Jersey Giants were all about 2 to 3 months old, I caught a rat snake with one halfway down its mouth, the other half still sticking out. It was having a bad hard time swallowing the bird because it was bigger than it looked. Unfortunately trying to get the dead chicken out, the feathers were hanging inside the throat of the snake (he couldn't spit it out on his own either) I had to put the snake down with a hatchet). That snake was a 6 footer. The 4 footer that got inside the coop when the birds were the same age was only looking for eggs, he was doing everything he could to keep away from the young chickens, heh.

 

[amystours]

My hubby threatened to feed one of my biddies to our snakes tonight...

I almost clobbered him.

We have two snakes, a Burmese and a Ball (both pythons), but they have a diet of strictly frozen rats.

As for "outside" snakes???

I'm terrified. Was recently thinking how in the world I was going to keep them out of my chicken house. The chicks are still small, so they are still in the house, but I dread going out one day to find one (or more) gone!!!