snakes

[Harley Demag]

will regular garden snakes eat the eggs?

 

[zazouse]

If you mean them long slinder green snakes , yea they can eat eggs if the are small like wild bird eggs but they could not eat my banty eggs at least the ones here can't cause their mouth is to small.

 

[chfite]

If the chickens don't eat the snake first. Nothing is safe inside a run or coop. Chickens will eat almost anything.

Chris

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

True, the snake has to be fairly large to eat or break a chicken egg, or avoid being preyed on.

 

[southdakota]

Found this snake in my quail cage this morning, the large bulge on the left side of the picture is one quail that it had already eaten, there is another quail in it's mouth...these were adult quail in a secure rabbit cage, in a barn with hens and guineas free roaming all over the place...Mr. Bull Snake was over 4 feet long...once he ate the first quail, he could not get back out of the cage, although he tried...he shot out the side through the hardware cloth and came to an abrupt halt when his stomach with the chick in it was too big to pass through the hole...he then met Mr. Smith and Wesson .38 three times, and Mr. Shovel to the head once. I have always favored snakes because they eat mice, but when they eat adult quail, enough is enough.

 

[zazouse]

Looks like the pen was not as secure as you once thought, you need a smaller gage wire, if the snake can get in a rat can also and rats will eat them alive too.

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

I just finished rat/snake prooffing the broody/chick pen, just in time too...didn't really think about daytime slitherers just the nightitme ones.

 

[southdakota]

Yes, I had just moved the quail to this wire cage because it was going to be 103 today and I was afraid they would be too warm in their regular cage. My mistake. I moved them at 5:30 a.m.and when I came back at 7 a.m. I found Mr. Snake in the cage with his belly full of quail and another quail in his mouth. I will move them back to their regular cage until I can add a smaller gauge wire to their summer breeze cage.

 

[plymouthbabies]

Tonight when i got back from town I went to close the chicken pen and i found a rat snake on one of my astalathorps. I am new to chickens but i can tell you you need to always look out for snakes. It was my first chicken killed.

 

[Hannah hen]

I just experienced a similar fate as southdakota, 64 of my three week old Jumbo Brown Quail were moved out of the brooder to their pen last night. This morning after mowing the grass I was checking all my birds and in the corner of the pen was a 4ft black snake with to quail size lumps. Needless to say that snake will not be eating any more birds.
Only redeeming factor was it was 2 males which I have to many of anyway. I'm certainly glad it wasn't any of my BLR wyandotte chicks in the hoop house near by.
I've read a number of posts on snake proofing, and it seems the only solution is to rat wire the complete pen. My quail pen right now is a 16 x 20x 8, though this more than large enough, I've never liked crowding my birds. Has anyone else tried another deterrent that works?