Snakes in hen house

BTW, forgot to mention this, but I also keep my feed locked up on a barn, and almost never see mice or signs of them and have never seen a snake in the barn. But I also have 3 barn cats living in there. My daughter has a similar barn, has lots of mice and black snakes and NO cats. So a bunch of barn cats might be an option for you to consider if you have mice present that might be attracting your snake.


If like in my setting, the rodent abundance cycles such that all the predators combined cannot keep it suppressed at all times. What can complicate issues is the surroundings not directly in poultry use. Outside barn you can have food and cover allowing build up of rodents despite what barn provides. Over winter I a good number of white-footed mice with some house mice. As the seasons progressed the house mice replaced the white-footed. The house mice do seem more tied to feed spillage. A single young adult tom cat and at least a couple Coopers Hawks worked barn for the mice when weather was cool but now that growing season is well underway they have too many other targets for consumption to waste time in my barn.
 
I found a large black snake in a nest box several days ago. My husband removed it. Since then the hens are no longer laying! I'm going to change the straw in the coop to see if that will help. Any other suggestions?
 
I found a large black snake in a nest box several days ago. My husband removed it. Since then the hens are no longer laying! I'm going to change the straw in the coop to see if that will help. Any other suggestions?

Are you certain they aren't laying? I've seen snakes eat several eggs before they are full for a while.
 
Don't leave out large pieces of wood for snakes to hang out under, and don't leave any eggs in the coop too long. I think that the issue would be more for the chicks (if you have any) and ducklings than for older chickens, but personally, I would kill it for everybody's safety
 
Someone asked about geese and I have had geese take care of the smaller snakes for me. I've never lost a goose or gosling to snakes but I'm sure there's a limit on the size they could handle - I regularly got 5-6' snakes in TX so the geese probably weren't tackling those.

I'm sure it varies though. I'd always heard guineas would kill snakes but my flock was clueless.
 

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