Night-Time Nusiance

If you’ve got chickens, sooner or later you’ll have to deal with a rat snake. We only have hens, we don’t have any hatchlings. So I’m not worried he would hurt the hens, he’s just looking for a quick egg meal.

What he doesn’t know is that I collect eggs almost as soon as they’re laid, they never stay in the nesting boxes for long. So his eggy meal is denied.

Oh, and that lump you see in his belly? Yep, he ate the golf ball that I keep in the nesting box. LOL.

But rat snakes have a valuable place in our ecosystem. They do a fine job of keeping mice in check. A good thing if you’ve plopped your home in the middle of what used to be an open cow pasture!

Of course venomous snakes we’ll dispatch. But all others are simply relocated.

We have these 47″ snake grabbers that safely captured this snake off the chicken coop. We walk across the street and toss him far over the fence.

He could certainly  make his way back of course, but it’s our hope he carries on with catching and eating mice!