Yikes, snake problemat your end FL Bullfrog! When you said that they'll also swallow the ceramic eggs,.....serves them right and hope they die of constipation not being able to poop the ceramic egg out! lol..... ;)
You know you might really want to consider some really well bred Americanas bred for both physical features of the breed and brains. My Americana hen Izzy is so good at evading snakes. She actually sees them before everyone else and has a specific alert when she detects a snake. You raise some good Americanas with some high quality young guard geese and that will deal with your snake problem.
Dang bro. Iv got rattlers and copperheads but my chickens wo t be free range until another few weeks (they're 6 weeks old) but I'll know soon which predators are a problem up in these mountains. I know there's hawks... but thats why I got some Leige Fighters. Ordered 5 eggs, got 8, only 3 hatched. 2 black guys and a white guy. Healthy and full of energy
Seems like you could just build snake proof cages for your hens that are on eggs. Sounds like a fools errand to have to go out every night looking for snakes. Like they say, the best offense is a good defense. Looks to me like a lot of micromanaging. And if you're in a rural area, they're just gonna keep coming. You can't kill em all.
I think I can kill most, then the few that remain won’t be a major issue. I’m probably doing wonders for the local quail and turkey populations, which means more wild game birds for my use. Most of my hens free range to begin with. I either got to let the snakes do what they want or beat their numbers down.
@@Florida_Bullfrog so... How long have you been at it? When you create a vacuum in nature something will always fill it. Where there is a snake void, more snakes are going to pour in. You may actually have more snakes in your area because of the artificial snake void you're creating. Then if your turkey and quail populations boom then even more snakes are going g to pour into the area because of the abundance. Predator-prey relationships aren't so simple.
Or perhaps, snake populations are artificially high because there aren’t as many people living off the land as there used to be and people no longer kill snakes around the homestead as people did in times past. There’s a contradiction in the “don’t kill snake” position that on one hand says me killing them is futile because they’ll keep coming, but on the other hand if I keep killing them I’ll upset the balance and wipe the snakes out. It can’t be both ways. I can’t be dramatically harming their population in a way that its going to create a vacuum but they’re just going to keep coming because there’s more snakes than I can kill. If there’s an infinite amount of snakes that move in as soon as I kill the current snakes, then the status quo is the same whether I leave the snakes or kill them and no harm is being done. As it is, I believe the situation is much simpler than all of that. The snakes are moving in on my chickens just as they would wild turkeys and quail. When I moved here 5 years ago there were lots more quail and turkey around. They started disappearing about 3 years ago about the time I got my chickens. The previous owner killed and sprayed everything around. I took a hands off approach and stopped using all chemicals on the farm and rarely killed any animal. I didn’t touch non-venomous snakes for 3 years. Then last year they started hitting my chickens hard and I realized I had to get the snakes under control. I bet as I kill more the turkey and quail will recover. You see, nature has no balance without man. Man was made to rule nature and nature goes into disrepair without man. The farm was worse off when I let nature totally do its thing without my guidance. Now that I’m taking control and correcting the imbalance in predatory snakes, I believe the land as a whole with become healthier.
Besides snakes I have bear's to raccoons so I'm building a coop but has to be like Fort Knox so it is going to be a lot of work but better to to do it good the first time than regret not doing it and have a safe place for my flock ...at the moment they are inside with me at night ...lol ..
I totally agree about that snake are not essential on your land although a black snake is good in a cattle of equine barn so mice won’t poop in the feed. They are bad with chickens. It would be good to set minnow traps with one of your false eggs with the scent of the mama hen laying on it.
