snakes in the chicken coop

[JW12]

Hello and welcome! I hope you find the source of missing eggs. If you do find snake good luck dealing with it! personally I would chop it with a shovel or take out my 20 Ga.

X's 2 lol

 

[sdugey]

Love that solution, Especially, after eating my egg one day before hatching. Can you imagine eating a whole peahen egg. That is a big egg. We are about to hay our 100 acres. after that, it will be easier to see the varments.

 

[sourland]

Welcome to BYC. Good luck at solving the predator in the missing egg saga.

 

[Chicken Girl 5]

If the snake has an egg in it's mouth, it won't be able to get out.

 

[cabinchicky]

100 acre hay field means snakes found easy in bales and everywhere else. I wish you luck. Did you look around coop for holes and plug them?? Snakes will eat mice as well and I really rather not see a mouse instead of a gardner snake.

 

[JadedPhoenix]

This has been a bad year!!! I'm now suffering the consequences of procrastinating in going to buy my mothballs.

I went out to check on my eggs this evening and I hear one of my chicks making an awful racket in the brooding coop. Can you guess what was in there? Yep, a big ole snake. It had killed one a chick but the chick was too big to eat. So a complete waste of the chick.

Ironically, the chick that had gotten my attention was three weeks younger than the dead chick and would have made a perfect meal for the snake.

So between snakes and predators of the two-legged kind, I've lost seven chicks in two weeks. Not a good year for me with chicks. I do better when the weather is cold. Keeps both away from my coops.

 

[olfart]

After this I reminded myself not to discharge a .38 inside a metal chicken house. But that IS one sure way to rid yourself of a snake problem. This particular snake had already killed 3 of my new pullets, so I was checking the house pretty regularly when I found him with this chick in his mouth. I stepped on his neck, and he spit out the chick, but it was too late for the bird.

 

[JadedPhoenix]

Poor thing. I know that snakes have to eat too but to go after ones that are just way too big to digest gets me mad. Why couldn't they just go after the copperheads in the area? That is the only reason we usually don't kill the black snakes.

 

[sdugey]

I just order a product called Serpent guard. Non toxic to chickens, dogs, cats ,etc. You can spray it directly on the nest. Seems snakes hate the smell ,but it doesn't bother other animals. Will let you know how it works.

 

[atmaclean]

I went out this morning to move my Silkie hen who has just hatched 4 guinea keets for me. When I went to move her nest box, a huge long black snake shot out from under it. Luckily I had the presnece of mind to grab it and scream for my husband to go get a feed bag. I stuffed it in there and tied off the top. I've been shaking for 2 hours it scared me so badly. Now I know where a lot of my missing eggs went. I thought my guineas would run off or kill snakes, but apparently not. i've got over 50 of them and this snake was inside my chicken compound under a nest box just waiting to eat those baby guinea keets!! Not sure what I am going to do with it. It is safely in a feed bag right now. I may take it over to the next county or kill it. Now I am petrified to go in my chicken coop for fear there are more lurking under other things! I moved my sikie and he 4 baby guinea keets, but another snake could come eat them, I supposed....apparently, they can get in the coop somehow! I am not usually fearful of snakes, but when they pop out at me when I am totally not expecting it, it has really gotten to me today.

I would love to know some effective snake deterrents that I could put all around my coops and the perimeter of the yard!!!

Angela in NC