Don't Tread on Me

Our hen house borders the woods on the south side of the property.  That's always been a problem.  There are lots of critters in the woods - possums, rabbits, rats, MINKS, stray cats, squirrels, and snakes.  Rat snakes grow to be six feet long, easily.  They look scary, but they are harmless.  In fact, we leave them alone for the most part.  They are like heat-seeking missiles that take out rats and keep the population under control.

Where we run into problems is when the rat snakes (we call them chicken snakes) opt for easier prey and begin eating our eggs.  When I went out to the hen house with my egg basket to begin gathering eggs, look what was waiting for me in the very first box.  No wonder all the hens were acting real nervous right outside the hen house.

It's quite obvious the snake had eaten an egg.  Its skin is stretched taut and you can see the oval shape of an egg there.  It is also an amazing thing that the snake can open its mouth wide enough to ingest the egg.

To assist in combatting egg loss by these reptilian rascals, we have placed ceramic eggs in each of the nesting boxes bordering the woods.  I use a black sharpie to draw a stripe around the egg so that I'll be able to tell the fake eggs from the real ones.  You can see those below.  If you look above, you'll note that the fake egg is missing from the box.  The snake had eaten the fake egg.  It's a death sentence for the snake.  He'll get a terminal case of constipation, because he'll never break that egg and he's sure not gonna pass it.

Sometimes, the snake slithers off into the woods and dies and we'll find the ceramic egg in a snake skeleton months later.  This time, I'm not going to wait.  I'm going to get our egg back.  Armed with a shovel, I performed a surgical procedure to remove it.  I got our egg back.

If the snake would have just stayed in his lane, all would have been well.  He would have been free to kill rats - a practice that rat snakes are quite adept at doing.  Tragically, the snake got "tread" on.

The Serpent in the Hen House

14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.  Genesis 3:14-15

That, of course, is the Biblical story of the fall.  Adam and Eve were beguiled by the serpent and ate of the fruit that they were forbidden to eat.  It all started from questioning the Creator when He knows best.  Good wisdom for us today.  Life has a way of humbling most folks and we come to realize that God knows what he's doing.  He's put safeguards, commandments, and standards in place to protect us.

The woman on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm had a run-in with a serpent in the hen house this week, and yes, there was enmity between the serpent and the woman.  Tricia opened the nesting boxes so that the hens could begin laying their (precious and expensive) eggs.  When she opened one of the boxes, there was a chicken snake in the box.  We call them chicken snakes, but I think the official name is the Texas Rat Snake.  Snakes, apparently, are no respecter of borders, as he's about 70 miles over the border.

The snake was almost as frightened of the woman as the woman was of it.  The serpent tried heroically to make an escape, but alas, it was not to be.  For the snake had swallowed a ceramic egg that we keep in the hen house, and when he tried to slither through the fencing that lines the bottom of the boxes, his girth was now too wide to get through the fencing.  His greed had trapped him.  Ordinarily, if it was a real egg, it would have burst.  Ceramic eggs don't burst.  Tricia picked up a shovel and then a steel pipe and killed the snake.  

The Battle of the Bulge

That bulge is the ceramic egg.  Ordinarily, the ceramic egg will give the snake a really bad case of constipation and he would die.  Sad, but our land borders some woods.  If you don't somewhat control the snakes, you won't get eggs.  I've got to get my ceramic egg back.  Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, right?  I cut the snake in two right above the bulge.

I used my foot to coax the fake egg out of the snake.

And here we are.  I got our egg back.  I tossed it right back in the box.  You'll notice it has an "X" marked on it with a Sharpie.  They look so real that we were picking them up when we picked up eggs each afternoon.  The X lets us know that it's a fake egg and to leave it alone.  Apparently, snakes haven't cracked that code, yet.

We welcome the snakes to come eat the rats.  We have plenty of those in the barn and hen house.  Rats move, however.  An egg is a stationary target and is easier for the snakes to get a quick meal.  This one paid a high price for his egg breakfast in the drive thru line.

Sonnier's Shed of Snakes

Here is the feed room in our barn. The brown plastic bins on the right contain, beginning with the first one, Dairy Ration for the cows and goats.  The middle bin has Laying Pellets for the hens and the last bin contains rice for the chickens.  The black bin in the back left contains Alfalfa "mulch" for the cows and the yellow bins in front of it contain extra storage for Laying Pellets.  The feed room is not really neat and orderly and needs to be cleaned up and organized.  Of course that will take place when it is about 30 degrees cooler.

Yesterday as I was pouring Laying pellets into the yellow bins, I moved the top one out of the way to begin pouring into the bottom one.  As I moved them, I was surprised by an unwelcome guest.

It was a long chicken snake.  The official name is Rat Snake. They aren't really dangerous, but they get so cotton-pickin' big, they scare you.  I have a buddy who will not kill them. He says they are "heat-seeking missiles" that destroy rats in his barn.  That may be the case in his barn, but in mine, the chicken snakes are lazy. Rather than seeking out and destroying rats, they would much rather destroy our eggs, since eggs don't move!

Because of their penchant for egg-eating, our rat snakes must go.  We had seen a reduction in our egg production and now I know why!  Doggone snakes! Fortunately I had a stick that I was able to beat the snake with until he was dead.  I killed him and threw him outside the door of the feed room on the barn floor.  The old boy was caught red-handed. Can you see TWO EGGS in his belly?  See the bulges right by my foot?

Remember back in high school biology class when you had to dissect worms or fetal pigs? Let's dissect this snake and retrieve the eggs!  I went back into the feed room to get a knife to perform the surgery with and wouldn't you know it, I got into a skirmish with a second snake!  This one put up quite a fight, striking at me, but he finally got the business-end of my stick and was incapacitated.  This one didn't have any "egg-bulges" in him, but he would have if he had gotten the opportunity.

The rat snakes laid side by side are roughly the same size.  Perhaps they were a husband and wife pair.  I'll keep a sharp eye out for their offspring!

It is clear that there are two chicken eggs in the snake's stomach.  What they will do is crawl through a small space, rubbing their side and burst the eggs inside them so that they can digest the contents of the egg.  I tried stomping on the bulges, but the eggs would not burst.  I think I know what is going on here!

To prove my suspicion, we must make an incision in the snake's belly to retrieve the stolen eggs.

Once the snake's belly has been cut in half, I use my foot to squeeze the egg out, revealing an egg that proves my suspicion - A Fake Egg!  It is not real, but ceramic. See the black line around the egg?  That is how I mark the nest eggs so we don't pick them up when gathering eggs.

I squeezed out the second egg and it was another fake egg.  This one is made of wood and is another nest egg.  What are nest eggs?  Well, for us they serve two purposes: We put them in the nesting boxes to encourage the hens to lay.  If they see an "egg" in the box, they'll lay their eggs with the nest egg and not out on the ground or in weird, hard-to-find places.  The second reason is to kill snakes.  If a snake eats the nest eggs, like this one did, he will have a case of constipation that no amount of Raisin Bran can cure and will die. When he finally dies and decomposes, we'll find his carcass and retrieve our fake eggs - only this time, we didn't have to wait for that to happen.  We got our eggs back fast!

With the egg thieves executed, the chickens joined me in dancing around the perpetrators, happy that justice had been served.

My wife was also happy that Sonnier's Shed of Snakes is now snake-less. Hopefully...