Chickens for bug control and food recycling.

[Beekissed]

Bee not sure how humane, but someone on BYC blows out a egg shell fill it with salt seals the egg and puts back on nest. Snake eats egg and dies

I wasn't missing eggs...they waited for chicks to hatch and ate them right after hatch and a few days after. If I could entice them with a salt baited egg, I'd most certainly do so! I don't really care too much about humane when it comes to a snake and my chicks....if you've ever seen how they kill and eat them, humane doesn't figure into it.

Bee, how dry was it? Some years I can go all season without any problems with snakes in the coop, others they are much more of a problem. I think it is related to weather. My worst years are normally dry years, especially hot dry summers. During a hot drought a few years back I permanently removed two different 5' black rat snakes from the coop within a week.

It's not that unusual for me to see a snake, usually a rat snake or black racer, outside my coop. They are after the mice. I leave them alone. But if they start eating eggs or chicks, well, I have no tolerance for that.

Really wet spring, RR. So wet that my wood's broody's clutch was pretty affected by all the moisture...this year if I get one sitting out there I'll erect a rain shelter over her. She was sopping wet all through that brood and her nest stayed sopping, so many of her eggs had cancelled and were rotting...I'm surprised she had any hatch at all under those conditions.

She was one I had tried to move to the brood pen with the rest of the hens but she kept abandoning the eggs no matter what I tried...she's really wild and even raised her chicks out there in the woods away from the flock. I've tried penning her before into a breeding situation and, as soon as I did, she'd just stop laying and pace the fence, wanting OUT. Found I couldn't make that one be domesticated...which is sort of okay for me in a lot of ways, as I'm always shooting for range worthy birds. I'd like to walk the line between them laying in the coop, brooding in the maternity ward but raising their chicks out in the wild blue yonder....but I'm doubting if I can have it both ways.

I'm with you...I was always taught to leave a black snake alone as they are beneficial to a farm....but when they mess with my chicks they are dead meat. This pair moved in and my more beneficial but harmless snakes moved OUT. I used to have a brown eastern snake, a garter snake and a milksnake living up there near the coop each season...I liked that because their young were good protein sources for the chickens. Along with the black snakes, we had a copperhead move in....hadn't seen one of those in over 20 yrs around here.

I'm hoping to capture these black snakes with my fine bird netting around the coop...they weave into that stuff and can't get out, it tightens around them as they get more and more tangled. Found that out by accident but now I'm going to use it as a trap, if I can.

Bee, do you still have snow on the ground? Some of your pictures have quite a bit of it and some have non. Your birds are so beautiful.

Mary

Thank you! No snow on our ground...was 65 degrees last night at sundown, though it snowed the day before. We've only had a few snows that even covered the ground this year, which is hugely abnormal for my part of WV. It's been WAY too warm all winter long.

 

[ninnymary]

Wow, 65 at sundown! That's about our daytime temperature on a good day.

Mary

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah, the problem with a lot of these ways is to get them to work. I've had snakes eat golf balls in the nests and get trapped in the coop because they couldn't fit back through the hole they came in. I've had a snake eat the eggs out from under a broody hen but totally ignore the golf balls I put under her. What causes them to eat a golf ball? I don't know. Could I entice one to eat a salt filled egg? I don't know.

One way people push on the chicken forum is to use a minnow trap. it could work, you'll sometimes get a water snake in a minnow trap. But it would need to be a fine mesh trap for small minnows. It's amazing how small a wire mesh a snake can crawl through if they haven't swallowed a golf ball or a chick. I don't know if you'd even need to bait a minnow trap, it would probably work to put them against a wall where they normally crawl.

Deer or bird netting is supposed to work too. Sort of tangle it up so they can get caught in the mess. I haven't tried it but if I have another snake problem it's probably the way I'd go.

Mary, last week I had a morning low of 18. Two days later I had a high of 81. It's a little after 5:00 pm and its 68 right now. According to the forecast it's not supposed to get below freezing until a week from today, but that can change.

 

[Beekissed]

I found out about that fine bird netting when I had laid some down over my flower beds before planting so as to keep the chickens from scratching there. We also had tacked up some under the porch steps to keep the chickens out of that space. Twice we came out to find black snakes tangled up in that stuff, but good...had to cut them loose and that netting was practically cutting them into, they had tangled it so tight.

I had a big snake that ate a couple of chicks in a brooder once and couldn't get back out of the wire due to the bulge in its belly...big mistake. She never left the coop alive.

 

[ninnymary]

Ridgerunner, your temperatures sure are swinging. That's amazing. Sometimes when we have heat waves we can make big jumps from a couple days to the next. One day it may be foggy and cold, 2 days later we are in a heat wave. Well at least a heatwave to us.

Mary

 

[PennyJo]

You know we only have garter type snakes about here that I am so thankful for
not high enough for any type of copperhead or the likes either

 

[baymule]

There is an online company that will create a mosaic from your own design or photograph.I'm sure they are pricey but there are many different companies-there are probably some more affordable ones. http://www.susanjablon.com/glass-tile/photo-mosaic-glass-tile.html

Thanks for the link!

 

[baymule]

Our dogs hate snakes. Paris, my female Great Pyrenees kills them. She has killed copperheads and rat snakes. Parker, our black Lab/Great Dane is just smart enough to get himself bitten by a copperhead......baby aspirin and Benedryl for him!

 

[Beekissed]

I sure hope Ben starts killing blacksnakes!!! Paris is some kind of dog!!!

 

[Nyboy]

Be careful Rattlesnake venom much stronger then copperhead