I love seeing our chickens peck around the shed looking for insects to eat, making their eggs taste that much better! They are so pretty when they roost in our "snake proof" chicken coop, right after we have gathered up all the eggs. Sometimes we will get up to 10 a day!
But lately there has been a change. Our little chicks (that the hens lay on and hatch naturally) have been dying or simply gone missing. We have not been getting as many eggs either and thought it was very strange when we found all of our "mama" hen's eggs missing.
But don't be alarmed! We have found the culprit! The mystery is solved! Today when Phillip went outside to let the chickens loose for their usual time of freedom around our yard, he found a long snake lurking around the chicken's nest, sniffing for some freshly laid "delights". Phillip quickly got rid of the nuisance which we later found out was a "chicken snake" that measured 5 feet 7 inches! After researching it, we found out that oak snakes also eat eggs! This is very good to know because we always see oak snakes, but don't think nothing of it since we thought they were harmless. I guess we were wrong!
Hopefully this ugly thing doesn't have any cousins living around here. Maybe now we can have all our eggs to our self!
Here is the brave hero with his catch.
When I took this picture I didn't get the 5 foot mark in it, but it really was 5' 7''.
3 comments:
Yuck. I'm not so comfortable with snakes. I'll stay in Canada.
Oh dear! Talk about a big one! :)
We had the same problem twice before! Except the snake we found was a different kind, but it was pretty big!
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