This page may contain affiliate links, which means if you purchase something through one of the links on this page, I may earn a small commission. This is at no extra cost to you, and helps me continue doing what I love.
The first snake we see of the season, and we see it too late. This 5-foot snake killed all but a couple of the chicks we hatched last week. It’s hard to see in the picture, but it had already eaten 8 chicken and quail chicks by the time Stephen caught it.
The only bright side is that we didn’t have to buy the chicks that it ate. At least it’s easy enough to turn the incubator back on again. Aggravating, yes, but it’s not like we’re out a lot of money. That’s a blessing!
Brenda, I’m not really sure. Stephen always just calls them Black Snakes.
What kind of snake is that? Is looks like a black rat but I can’t really tell.
Yeah. . . . . .
Time to get out the hammer and nails…lol!
Tara, I was about 3 feet from him when I took the picture, only I was inside the house. If you look closely, you can see the reflection of my camera in the glass door right above Stephen’s arm. It was just a “harmless” black snake – harmless to us but lethal for our chicks! Oh well. It happens.
Oh any site of a snake just makes my stomach turn….eeeeeeeeck!!! I hope you very very far away when you took that picture! So glad it worked out with the chicks even tho it’s so sad!
We use something similar to a rabbit hutch – an old wooden bookshelf made into four “condos.” The snake got right inside it. We need something even more secure, but that’s what we’ve been using for now.
Aw…i’m sorry. That’s happened to us more than once. What do you do with your chicks when they are ready to leave the house, but not old enough to join the rest of the birds? We usually put them in an old rabbit hutch. That way we could still leave the heating lamp on them and we knew they were protected from predators.