Snake in the nest box
A few weeks ago, we noticed a drastic decline in the number of eggs coming out of our coop. As day length decreases, it's normal to notice fewer eggs,
but a hen's lay usually drops off gradually rather than all at
once. Added to the mystery, some days our egg haul was back to
normal, followed by a series of days with only one or two eggs in the
nest box. What was going on?
Mark solved the mystery
when he found a black rat snake sunning itself outside the coop in the
middle of August. For a while, we gathered eggs earlier in the
day, and the snake seemed to have moved on, but numbers once again
declined this past week. Sure enough, this time Mark caught the
snake in the act, its body swollen around an egg.
Black
rat snakes are completely non-poisonous, and from my days as a
naturalist, I know most are actually pretty friendly too. But I
still didn't feel comfortable just picking up the snake (which I planned
to relocate to the other side of the hill).
Instead, I tried pushing the snake into a bucket, then I ended up
chasing it across the coop where the reptile kept trying to slither out
holes which no longer fit its body due to the addition of the egg
lump. Eventually, the snake regurgitated its egg and disappeared
into the weeds...just as Mark appeared with a homemade tool to make
snake handling easier. Stay tuned for Mark's post on that topic
later (and, maybe, a successful catch this afternoon?).
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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