What kind of snake is this?

[Ducklove334]

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Actually, Garter snakes are black with like 3 (or is it 5?) stripes all the way down the body. Milk snakes are banded around red, black, and white or yellow.

in WV we have snakes that live in and around the milkweeds, and cattails and such in marshy areas, we've always called those milk snakes, dunno what they're really called lol

I like snakes, havn't seen any this year so far.

 

[ArizonaNessa]

I am no snake expert but that looks just exactly like the snake that slithered across my BARE FEET in my backyard causing me to almost have a heart attack. I chased it around and around in my terror trying to kill it to no avail. Hubby came home and found it curled up under the trash trailer and laughed so hard he almost peed himself and told me it was a gopher snake and thanks to me the gophers would be returning. Sure enough I had bashed that thing so much it did pass on and yep the gophers are back in full force.

I feel so bad that I kill it. That is when I learned that snakes don't all have to be bad. Some are beneficial.

 

[ClairedeLune]

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[TammyTX]

It will just come back and eat more and more of your eggs and CAN kill your birds. If you need rodent control, get a good cat or use traps.

I lost one of mine to a chicken snake much too small (even at 5 feet) to swallow a large chicken. Didn't stop the snake from killing the bird in trying though. We also had a juvenile chicken snake attack one of our 5 week olds, again too much chicken for the snake to eat.

It is understandable for people to want to protect snakes for the good that they do, but do not be naive and think the snake knows the difference from it's okay to eat an egg, but not okay to eat a chicken. They don't care, they're snakes!

Recently, we found a large 4/5 foot Yellow Bellied Racer in the yard. I did not kill him because so far he hasn't posed a threat. But if I find that bugger in my chicken yard, he's dead...don't care....bye bye. I did find out later that Yellow Bellies will eat small birds, but I didn't see anything about eggs.

 

[amazondoc]

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Cats also kill chickens, as well as native birds and other wildlife. Traps have to be repeatedly cleaned and reset, and can injure pets.

Nothing is free of cost.

 

[Boyd]

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Actually, Garter snakes are black with like 3 (or is it 5?) stripes all the way down the body. Milk snakes are banded around red, black, and white or yellow.

you got it kiddo

I'm guessin gopher snake?!

 

[TammyTX]

Cats, I'm sure, have killed chickens. Mine doesn't give them a second thought. So far I've never found a cat in my chicken coop. If I did it would be trapped and taken to the pound. No preditors are permitted.

Killing snakes is not something I like doing and so far we've only had to kill two since March. But it is a necessary evil just like culling a sick bird.

...and who said "free"? The price I am not willing to pay again is the life of my chickens which is the risk you take in not controlling snakes.

 

[The Wolf Queen]

Definetly a gopher snake and

Azcknldy wrote: I am no snake expert but that looks just exactly like the snake that slithered across my BARE FEET in my backyard causing me to almost have a heart attack. I chased it around and around in my terror trying to kill it to no avail. Hubby came home and found it curled up under the trash trailer and laughed so hard he almost peed himself and told me it was a gopher snake and thanks to me the gophers would be returning. Sure enough I had bashed that thing so much it did pass on and yep the gophers are back in full force.

 

[chicamama]

Gopher snake or not..... it scared the heck out of me at first glance. Even still, I used my zoom lens because I'm no expert.

I'm of the mind set that non poisonous snakes are ok to keep the rodent pop down. I'm thinking. less rodent, less chance of rattlesnakes. It's also the reason I got my cats a few years ago. We were over run by rodents and not the cute little small ones, but big ones eating out of my dining room fruit bowl in the middle of the night. We, at first set traps and that seemed ok till the night one big ol' rat was just "injured" and splattered blood all over the kitchen as it's body flip flopped the trap all over the kitchen tile floor (you should have seen my dh trying to catch it, I swear he was so creeped out trying to stop it I almost think he wanted to jump up on the table and just scream, but of course, he could not)

So we got cats. I swear the minute we brought those cats in the house the rats were gone. Even as teeny 8 week old kittens the rats knew they were there.

The chickens scare my cats

If Mark had been home, and it was a rattlesnake, he would have killed it, no questions or guilt. My neighbor was bit by a rattler last summer and almost did not survive.

Theirony is later that day I found a black widow in the hallway.

My NYC friened say's she prefers her city cockroaches over my country style life.

NOt me!

.

 

[Uppity Peon]

That looks like a gopher snake. Gogher snakes will eat eggs, rats and mice, and even rattlers, so I think they are beneficial even if they get an occasional egg.

BTW Rattles eat eggs too. I knew of someone who would leave eggs out for a rattler that lived near her cabin. She was a little ... egg-centric?