June 6, 2017
The Real Egg Thief
We had forty little chicks in the high brooder. It was back when our little 4-level brooder held three batches of monthly chicks in stages and by the time they were in the bottom level, they roamed the yard. (At 12 to 13 weeks, our breed was too big for almost all predators.) Hardware cloth (wire) protected them from everything and a warm heat lamp kept them toasty (until their feathers come in at about 4 weeks, chicks need 100 degrees Fahrenheit).
But one morning when we went out to feed them, a corn snake had feasted! He had popped the staples and lifted up one corner of the hardware cloth to slide his seven foot body inside their tiny brooder and eat at his leisure. He was so camouflaged in their warm hay floor that we didn’t see him at first! We just saw that almost all the baby chicks were gone.
Corn snakes are very important around farms because they eat rodents and other pests. We had to relocate him to another area and use big u-nails instead of staples to make our brooder big-snake-proof.
Naturally, any adventure with our chickens turns into a Long Tail adventure! In Long Tail and the Egg Thief, the snake only eats eggs and tries to scare off the chickens. And, Long Tail’s humans shoot the snake with an arrow (this was because Christina and Rebeccah had been doing archery lately, so they thought that was cool). Usually, farmers don’t kill snakes unless they are poison snakes that pose a threat to livestock and people. We have a black racer snake living under our house and he routinely gets fat with mice that would try to get in the henhouse (or in our house).
Since then, we haven’t lost any chicks to snakes.
Raising chickens, like many things, is a learn-as-you-go activity. You can read and research forever, and try to do your best. Sometimes, everything will go along fine, but other times, the unexpected (three hungry fence-destroying neighbor dogs, a seven-foot corn snake, or a family of five dive-bombing 4 foot tall eagles) will show up and you learn from those mistakes on what to do next time.
For me, most of the upsets in our continuing chicken flock become adventure stories for Long Tail the Rooster. That’s seeing the bright side. Because just like everything in life, we can’t go back, only forward! Let’s march on, chicken adventures!
Thanks for reading!
Type at you later,
~Nancy Tar