Chicken updates and SNAKE!

We recently updated the chicken habitat a little. I finally got around to grommeting the tarp roof and attaching it via shower curtain hooks that I had on hand.

And In the pictures you can see that we are still employing the recycled low tech method of keeping our chickens. Their coop for roosting is a large plastic dog kennel for example. 

Bolted frame, loose wire that needs replacing, and zip ties; oh my!

It is getting near time that we consider making a new structure for them entirely. The tractor we have was a hand-me-down. It is tied together with zip ties which need to be replaced fairly often because they dry and crack from the sun. The center pole has also bowed quite a bit from water weight.

The hens like to play a game of king of the roost on top of this bucket sometimes.

I've been so busy with other projects I forgot to post my obligatory Happy-Chicken-Mama-first-eggs-of-Spring

And then....SNAKE!

This is not THE snake, this is A snake that was lurking near the perimeter.
 

Last week my boyfriend came in from the morning feeding of the velociraptors and calmly informed me that there were only two eggs today....because there is a large snake in the computer monitor, and that I could tend to that at my leisure. We have been known to have all kinds of the really nasty kinda snakes out here so I went prepared with a sword (because I'm lacking a more practical machete), and a robotic arm (because I don't own a snake stick),  and all the knowledge I have about snakes from when I used to hang out with a herpetologist years ago. By the time I got out there it had moved on so I was not able to identify it. 

We looked through pictures and as best as we can guess it was some kind of "black snake" or rat snake, and not the venomous types.

The repurposed Computer monitor complete with fake egg

The snake in question was curled up inside the computer monitor digesting his meal whilst the chickens complained in the other corner of the tractor. Two of the hens laid on top of the dog kennel later and took turns sitting on them.  We knew we would have to deal with snakes eventually so we reviewed our research and employed a strategy.

 The first stop was to the craft store to purchase wooden eggs. They cost about a dollar a piece and have more uses than just tricking snakes. We had read that snakes might grab these as an attack of opportunity vs. the actual eggs and that it would cause them digestive issues and well... what would happen if you swallowed a wooden egg whole? There is another interesting thing that occurs with the deployment of decoys: the chickens tend to lay near them. My apologies I don't have a nifty picture of this because the boyfriend was trying to be nice today and brought in the eggs for me before I could snap a shot. 

Real eggs with fake eggs

On the one hand this really makes it easier to collect eggs from my feisty girls who love to make it a hunt every day. On the other hand I'm not sure what the odds are on the snakes picking the fake egg over the real ones if they are all just laying in one convenient location. You can also see that most of our eggs are quite small in comparison to the wooden eggs which are much more duck-sized. 

Step two was to find some snake-away. We wanted to completely free-range our chickens but, found that there were too many predators in our wooded home and we just didn't want to have to keep an eye all the time or chase them around for their own protection. As a result we keep them in the tractor and move them every few weeks. During the winter they tend to stay in one place but we give them lots of straw to play in. We have a fenced in portion around the house that serves as a perimeter in case we wish to let them run or in the case of runaways when we're moving them. So we put some snake repellent around the outside perimeter. Snake  repellent may have "chemicals" or more specifically sulphur that you don't want near your chickens! Read your labels well and take precautions. We chose the most natural one we could find and we didn't put it that close to the hens. 

The black snake in the picture was found OUTSIDE the chicken area the day after the snake repellent so, I assume it did its job. We've also tried to be more vigilant about collecting eggs to avoid more losses. Some further reading indicated that having a larger quantity of chickens would be a further deterrent for snakes. I think five is enough for now. 

P.S. Dorking eggs are some of the tastiest ever!