Snake!!!

If you were asking about the snake trapping suggestion it was to use ell pots or minnow traps that were all metal. They look like wire mesh tubes about 8-12" in diameter and about 2 or more feet long with a wire mesh funnel on each end. Lay it along the edge of your run or coop and bait it with an egg.

We've recently moved further out in the boonies and have added a bunch of birds to our flocks, as well as encountering a mess of new predators.
Snake wise we were relocating 4-6' black snakes just about twice a week. Had one drop on me as I was cutting under a white pine wind break on the edge of the property. That was fun. Then there was the morning I found one sharing the nest with one of our Mallard moms, who was sitting on 15 eggs. She stayed put while the 4' black snake swallowed down number 15. I'd rather move snakes than deal with rats, but wifee relocates snakes with a sling blade, and any snake that messes with her ducks is destined to make like Louie and Marie.

We adopted some adult guineas and some turkeys so we added a fixed poultry house to acclimate the guineas and have a place for everybody to sleep this winter (we had been using a couple chicken tractors and letting everybody roam the property during the day). While the guineas were getting settled in we built a 100' run across the back of the property that was about 10' wide and covered to keep them out of the trees. Read bad things about liver pathogens in turkeys that share ground with chickens so they're kept out in our little orchard.

After a fox took one of our ducks, and a white headed vulture (you might know them as Bald Eagles) just missed one of our hens, we came up with a comprehensive varmint approach that seems to be working.

The yard has a five foot high T-post fence with 2"x4" welded wire on the perimeter. The posts are installed to allow me to run 7 electrified high tensil wires on insulators around the outside. I know it sounds excessive but we got most of the stuff at auction for cheap and still have a bunch left over. Besides... it's working. These start about 4-5" above the ground with another at 10, 16, 24, 36, 48 and 60". To keep maintenance down we mulched about two feet on each side of the fence. I also took a bunch of old chain link that we didn't need and laid it under the mulch along the outside of the new wire fence and then hog ringed it to the fence. The idea was to make double **** sure that no fox tried digging their way in under the electric. Fox around here get pretty bold when a chicken dinner is near and they have kids to feed. I do the same thing with the chicken tractors and main coop now by making a fold up framed screen for all four sides that clips up out of the way for moving and then folds back down in a second (our 8'x16' coop is also built to be moved, so burying the side wire was not possible). We had also had issues with fox digging into floorless tractors when the birds were spending the night in them. Not anymore. Matter of fact the 1/2" wire has stopped the snakes there as well (the chicken tractors are run on another property across the street from us now, and we plan on running broilers there this Spring).

Been leg trapping foxes and so far there are five less. Racoons and skunks appear to respect the electricity but we still had concerns about the snakes, barn owls as big as jumbo jets, black vultures, eagles, hawks, and feral cats. I still set our Catch'em Alive and box traps up near the flights and coop and have gotten rid of four of our 6 worst cat problems as well.

The guinea run across part of the back yard uses the 5' fence as as a starting point and seems to work as a snake moat, but just to be sure wifee had me add a 2' vertical band of the 1/2" mesh along the fence as well. Anything small emough to get through that is sure to end up as guinea food. They really love killin' the smaller snakes, although I haven't seen them around any big ones so it's just as well we're hopefully excluding them now.

We have two herding dogs that are outside during the day, so the big birds of prey keep their distance then, but the dogs come in at night, so we also added a platoon of these gadgets called Night-Guard's. We now have them all over the place at all different heights and they even seem to work on the remaing feral cats. We'll see.
 
So far(knock on wood) I have not found a snake in any of my coops. If I do, I will take it as a threat and act accordingly. :)
 
Well i have found several snakes in my hen house and they have all been killed. I'm afraid of them and i dont want then eating my baby chicks or my eggs. I don't feel Luke shating with them.
 
Found this guy in the baby pen one evening, curled up to the heat lamp. Hubby shot him through the head. Luckily the babies were free ranging that day.


These guys I usually do a "Lizzie Borden" routine on. I don't mind sharing eggs, but I refuse to lose any more babies to them.


 
Sjisty, was that picture recently taken? What kind is it? I hate them, I don't like sharing eggs or babies. They all must go!!
 
Sjisty, was that picture recently taken? What kind is it? I hate them, I don't like sharing eggs or babies. They all must go!!

The rattlesnake is from last winter. The rat snakes are from the summer before. This is our latest one, from about 4 or so months ago. Our pet sitter killed this one when we were out of town.
 
What kind of gun would be best for snakes? We had two that were over 5 feet long last year, and were lucky enough to have a neighbor with a shovel nearby, but with kids, chickens, dogs, and cats around I think I need to be able to deal with the snakes myself, but I don't want to get too close. Any suggestions?
 
.******What kind of gun would be best for snakes? We had two that were over 5 feet long last year, and were lucky enough to have a neighbor with a shovel nearby, but with kids, chickens, dogs, and cats around I think I need to be able to deal with the snakes myself, but I don't want to get too close. Any suggestions?****

20 gauge shotgun does it for me...
 

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