It doesn't help that I have broody hens with a tendency to commit infanticide.
Then I noticed that when I once had twenty six chickens (twenty hens and six roosters), I now only have a total of nineteen chickens (fourteen hens and five roosters). Less hens, less eggs.
I was hoping to increase our flock numbers by letting Broody #2 sit on a clutch of 16 eggs. The broody hen that I made that special, secure, fluffy private nest for has decided she no longer wants to sit on them. Yesterday I found her in the nest box, but off the clutch of eggs. And five of them were missing. I was thinking it was time to lop her head off, but I'm glad I delayed my initial "stupid chicken I'm gonn'a stew your pathetic butt" reaction.
Because there may have been a valid reason for her leaving the nest, and it may not have been her that was eating the eggs in her clutch.
I found this bugger up in the rafters of the hen house. S/he was curled up pretty tight so instead of trying to yank it's hefty looking mass of muscle out of the rafters I had Paul get out a pistol loaded with aptly-named snake shot (remind me to buy some more).
Didn't look that big up in the rafters until I started to pull it's mortally wounded, yet still very much alive body out of there. One more shot to the head and it was lights-out for this egg eating reptile.
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| Rhiannon and one egg, Mommy and one Black Snake. |
Thats a good sized Missouri egg stealer snake there. Takes a while for em to get that long.
ReplyDeleteHoley Crap! Too bad it didn't focus on rodent-eating instead of eggs. I've noticed that there aren't snakes around here this year - we only get little garter snakes. That means the frogs and toads are back. It's interesting to watch the balance shift from year to year. Hope there are many, many egg sandwiches in your future!
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain. I have lost several chicks to snakes this year. They quit eating the eggs and are going straight for the meat.
ReplyDeleteLast year Sand Flat Farm posted a picture of a snake in their hen house, they used golf balls for dummy eggs, snake ate I think 6 of them, try some golf balls in your nest boxes. She opened up the snake to get the golf balls out to reuse, I would have just bought new ones.
ReplyDeletefound it, go check out the snake and golf balls.
ReplyDeletehttp://sandflatfarm.blogspot.com/2012/08/273-of-300-ways-to-catch-snake-and.html
Holy Big Snake! If we had anything like that around here, I would have to move to a Condo in Cement City. I haven't even seen one of our little garter snakes in a few years. Which is just fine with me seeing as how they are the one thing I am not mature enough to handle. I would never, ever even hold a dead-as-a-door-nail snake as you are doing. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. Never. (Cringe, cringe, cringe. Big shudder.)
ReplyDeleteI had a snake eating eggs. The snake will actually live in the fluffy nest and steal eggs from under the setting hen.
ReplyDeleteWe've killed a few of those ourselves eating the eggs. Gives you the willies when you reach into the nest to get the eggs and you feel scales. Eeewwwww!!!!
ReplyDeleteGlad you found it! We have 2 broody hens but they never sit long enough to hatch anything so we just steal their eggs from beneath them and they get all upset. We put some in the incubator and have 6 hatched as of this morning. We still have an entire bowl full of eggs, I need to devil some.
ReplyDeleteGood kill! That is the biggest one I have seen. I hope your eggless problem is now solved.
ReplyDeleteOur girls are barely keeping up with us these days.
Crikey, that thing's huge! You should fry it up :)
ReplyDeleteThat is one BAS (big-ass-snake)!! Yikes!! I can't say that I blame the hen for deserting her post with that guy hanging out in the rafters! I like the idea of the wooden eggs or golf balls...bwaahaahaa!!
ReplyDeleteYup, those things will definitely decrease the egg count. We've had a decrease in eggs as well (only 8 layers at the moment and of those at least 3 are ancient, although the Welsummers still lay very well). Of course, we also have no sun, then there was the uproar with the rat, and one little goat that insists on sneaking into the coop to snack on chicken feed.
ReplyDelete