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Snake trouble in chickentown

2K views 29 replies 18 participants last post by  Clem 
#1 ·
For a while now, I've not been getting enough eggs. Down from 11-12 average to 7-8. And, sometimes I'd come in at 10:00 AM, get 7 or 8, but sometimes none. Then the eggs I WAS getting were covered with egg yolk. Maybe I had an egg eating chicken, but I never caught one. Just a few minutes ago, I made my afternoon check-in on the chickens, only 3 sticky eggs, only 7 for the day. I thought to look behind the eggbox, and there he was. Fat as could be, and didn't even care that I was looking mean at him.

A few seconds later, I could telepath his last thought.." Holy catfish, that old fart can move fast." Here he is, all kinked up behind the chicken coop
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And here he is, couple minutes later, uhh, hanging around by the shed door. When he finishes twitching, he'll be 6 ft long.
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Normally I relocate black snakes, but this one has made a home, inside my chicken coop, behind the egg box. I knew he was a big one, and looked 6 ft long while hiding. Initially I thought there might be 2, there was so much snake around.
BUT...I'm over 6 ft, too. And although I've got a few years on the snake, I'm really healthy, and I was figuring it would only be seconds til he wasn't particularly healthy....
Even snake ought to leave me alone, dammit.
 
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#2 ·
I’ve seen my chickens eat snakes- obviously not ones as big as that. We have one chicken we call limpy, because, well, she’s has a messed up leg and limps. The wife saw her with a baby snake the other day, limp-flying around trying to keep it from the other chickens. Eventually she realized she had to eat it before it got taken from her, so she flipped her head back and got it to fall in a way that she could suck it down whole, like a big noodle.
 
#6 ·
It is a shame when they figure out eggs are easier to catch than mice and go on welfare. We had to kill a big old one like that too. Try to keep the eggs collected several times a day to avoid this.
 
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#9 · (Edited)
22 years ago, the first day of the school year, a school bus come down to the end of the road, executed a 58 point turn around, knocked down the stop sign and mashed my mailbox flatter than day old beer, with mail inside. I called the head of the county road maintenance dept and told him to come down, bring his tools, pry my mailbox open give me my mail, beat the mailbox back in shape, and put it back up. Oh, yeah, bring a new stop sign, too.

Next day when I came home, my mailbox was still laying there, mashed up, but there was a new stop sign. I had to drive a 35 mile round trip to Lowe's, get a new mailbox, put it up, pry my mailbox open to get my mail. After all that, I saw the stop sign laying there in the weeds, on my property. So, I eminent domained it, to compensate for the mailbox business.

Was I wrong?
 
#11 ·
I've only ever wanted one street sign. If you go over west of the middle school and the first right turn, you go a long ways on a road that keeps changing names, but eventually, on the right hand side, is a road with a sign, named Rat Castle Road.
Now that no doubt came about when the county let the residents of the roads with just numbers, like "County road 1508" and such, name their own road. Lot of them got named after a creek, or someone on the road, but for the life of me, I can't figure how the folks on Rat Castle Road came to that name. I wanted to go down the road and get out and ask somebody, but I know how I'd feel if they were to come ask me, so I just kept wondering. Then I began to wonder what size bolts was on the sign... But I finished doing my business on that side of the county and have never had a reason to go over there again. Yet.
 
#26 ·
I've only ever wanted one street sign. If you go over west of the middle school and the first right turn, you go a long ways on a road that keeps changing names, but eventually, on the right hand side, is a road with a sign, named Rat Castle Road.
Now that no doubt came about when the county let the residents of the roads with just numbers, like "County road 1508" and such, name their own road. Lot of them got named after a creek, or someone on the road, but for the life of me, I can't figure how the folks on Rat Castle Road came to that name. I wanted to go down the road and get out and ask somebody, but I know how I'd feel if they were to come ask me, so I just kept wondering. Then I began to wonder what size bolts was on the sign... But I finished doing my business on that side of the county and have never had a reason to go over there again. Yet.
I went down Rat Castle Rd about a week ago, its about 10 minutes from my work. Off Park Springs rd.
 
#12 ·
Large snakes are all that ever ate my eggs and they always swallowed them whole. If you have eggs with yolk on the outside, you likely have at least one chicken eating eggs. You might put some fresh bedding in the nest boxes for more padding. A chicken will often step on an egg getting off the nest and break it. When that happens other chickens will also eat on the broken egg.
 
#19 ·
The only snakes we have this far north are the rare, occasional garter snake, about 20-30 cm long...
My cousin, the Georgia fighting chicken expert says he used to use an old golf ball to catch snakes.. Rub the golf ball under a hen setting on a nest, leave the ball in the nest...

He would find the snake stuck somewhere in the chicken wire as it could not get the golf ball through... He saying the messy part was retrieving the golf ball to reuse... :sick:
 
#21 ·
The only snakes we have this far north are the rare, occasional garter snake, about 20-30 cm long...
My cousin, the Georgia fighting chicken expert says he used to use an old golf ball to catch snakes.. Rub the golf ball under a hen setting on a nest, leave the ball in the nest...

He would find the snake stuck somewhere in the chicken wire as it could not get the golf ball through... He saying the messy part was retrieving the golf ball to reuse... :sick:
That’s gotta be a hell of a way to die. Was there a reason your uncle wanted to torture those garter snakes to death, or was he just a hobbyist psychopath?
 
#23 ·
It is cool to see how how hardwired our brains to respond to snakes, even snake-like shapes. I only ever see garter snakes around our house, but we see several each year. They startle me but I'm not over the top fearful of serpents so we both go on our way.
 
#28 · (Edited)
I've had a 5+ ft. rat snake tenant in my crawl space for over a year. I've even put a bowl of water in there for him. Can't wait until he rids my lawn of the shrews.
 
#30 ·
Here's a guy that just don't get a break here. Because there are dogs around, and a copperhead bite to the face or chest is really bad, I kill them on sight. The Copperheads, not the dogs. This one here was killed by a woman up on the paved road that I got all set up in the pellet/BB business. Smallish, 18 inches or so. just the right size for a dog to think, "Hey, I'll bite this thing and play with it a while.





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