I've caught quite a few 'chicken' snakes/rat snakes with believe it or not........bird netting. Yep!
Several years back my feed store started selling it to chicken owners who were having trouble with snakes getting into the hen house. They even had photos from other customers showing the snakes they'd caught. I got some and IT WORKS!!
It's black plastic (get the kind that has 3/4 to 1 inch openings) netting originally for putting over fruit trees to keep the birds off of the fruit.
The feed store had rolls of about 14' X 20' for about $8. You unroll it, lay it out and then loosely roll or twist it around on itself.....(that way the snake has to go through a bunch of loose layers) ....place it outside of the nest box area or anywhere you believe the snakes are getting in. The snakes will try to crawl through it and end up getting stuck in it.
I put mine down outside of the nest area and forgot about it til one day I went out to gather eggs and found a 3' rat snake all caught up in the netting. I catch several snakes yearly this way.
Several years before I started using the plastic netting I found a dead snake that had gotten stuck in some old twisted chicken wire.
Another thing I do (if eggs go missing) is put old golf balls in the nests. The snake will take the golf ball, but of course can't digest it so it dies. No more egg robbing snake!!
Several years back my feed store started selling it to chicken owners who were having trouble with snakes getting into the hen house. They even had photos from other customers showing the snakes they'd caught. I got some and IT WORKS!!
It's black plastic (get the kind that has 3/4 to 1 inch openings) netting originally for putting over fruit trees to keep the birds off of the fruit.
The feed store had rolls of about 14' X 20' for about $8. You unroll it, lay it out and then loosely roll or twist it around on itself.....(that way the snake has to go through a bunch of loose layers) ....place it outside of the nest box area or anywhere you believe the snakes are getting in. The snakes will try to crawl through it and end up getting stuck in it.
I put mine down outside of the nest area and forgot about it til one day I went out to gather eggs and found a 3' rat snake all caught up in the netting. I catch several snakes yearly this way.
Several years before I started using the plastic netting I found a dead snake that had gotten stuck in some old twisted chicken wire.
Another thing I do (if eggs go missing) is put old golf balls in the nests. The snake will take the golf ball, but of course can't digest it so it dies. No more egg robbing snake!!
