Gimme My Egg Back!

It hasn't even been a month ago since I posted the FAKE EGGS POST.  In it I explained that snakes had run off with almost all of our nest eggs.  The post shows how we purchased more and marked them with a Sharpie so as not to get them confused.  This afternoon it was almost time for church, but I decided that I could go collect eggs first, package them and put them away.

When I opened the henhouse door, this is what greeted me:

You can see by the bulge in the snake's neck that he has swallowed on of our new ceramic eggs!  See, this snake is doomed.  His digestive system will not break down and digest a solid ceramic egg.  He has a death sentence.  The thing is, he'll slither out to the woods and die, taking my ceramic egg with him.  No sir, that's not gonna happen.

I grabbed a shovel and gave the rat snake a chop behind the head.  I used my foot to push the egg out of the snake.

The snake was greedy.  In addition to the ceramic egg, he ate a real chicken egg.  It burst when I popped the snake with the shovel and egg yolk ran out of the snake.  Hens quickly surrounded the deceased snake and began eating the yolk.  Cannibals!

On the bright side, I got the ceramic egg back and put it back in the nesting box.  All's well that ends well.  It didn't end so well for the snake.  We let these snakes go when they are in the barn.  They do a service by eating rats.  When they enter the hen house, however, it's a different thing altogether.  They pay the ultimate price for this transgression.

These snakes are pretty much harmless to people.  They'll just give you a good scare, because they get so big.  This one measured about 5 1/2 feet long.

Tricia was glad it was me that found the snake.  She's killed them before, but she'd rather not.  I tossed the ceramic egg back in the nesting box and for the time being, we still have our full inventory of fake eggs in the boxes.

Why Would You Buy Fake Eggs?

On her way to the feed store on Saturday to get three 50 pound bags of chicken feed, I asked milkmaid Tricia if she would mind picking up some fake brown ceramic eggs while she was out.  Why would we purchase fake ceramic eggs?  There are several reasons, but I'll tell you ours - SNAKES!

Tricia came back with a package of four eggs below along with a funny story from the owner of the feed store.

The feed store owner is a very kind and out-going lady with a great personality.  When she saw Tricia's purchase of ceramic eggs, she asked, "Are you having trouble with snakes in the hen house, too?!"  She was very animated with hand expressions in her description of finding THREE snakes in the last week.  She had a dull shovel and it made the job of snake-killing hard.  She killed two of them, but had to call her son-in-law to come with a gun and shoot one down off of the rafters.

Yes, we've had the same problem lately.  When the rat snakes get in the hen house and begin eating eggs, we kill the snakes.  I hate to do it because they do a mighty fine job of keeping the rat population down, but they have an affinity for the eggs and that won't do.  When we catch them in the act, a shovel or a pipe or a board quickly and humanely dispenses of the offending reptile.

One other way we thin the population is with ceramic eggs.  We place a ceramic egg in the nesting boxes and when the snake gets in the box and swallows a ceramic egg, it has a fatal effect on the snake.  Unable to digest the egg, it gets an incurable case of constipation that kills him.  Over time our inventory of ceramic eggs disappears.  Sometimes we retrieve the egg from the snake's skeleton and we'll recycle them.  This time, with only 1 egg remaining, I had Tricia get four more.  The first thing I do is take a Sharpie and mark a big "X" on the ceramic eggs.  They look so real, if you aren't careful, you'll collect the fake egg and try to make an omelet with it.  The "X" alerts you to leave it in the nesting box.  It's for snakes to eat - not us!

Here is the last of the ceramic eggs alongside some fresh-laid REAL eggs.  See how real it looks?  It would be easy to confuse, and you can see why the snake eats them.

I stepped into the hen house to deposit a ceramic egg in each of the boxes on the side of the hen house that is adjacent to the woods.  Some of the hens had already laid their eggs and some were in the process of egg laying.  They fluffed up their feathers and made irritating noises to shoo me away from my task.

Hens like their privacy when laying and I was an intruder to their peaceful place.  It wouldn't take long.  I just needed to drop four eggs in four boxes.  This Aracauna let me know in no uncertain terms that I needed to leave.

My job was done and I was out the door.

Now, each box had a fake egg in it, and this will help with the snake problem.  There are five boxes on the other side, but the snakes always are on this side since it's closest to the woods.  I need to get the machete and clean out the ever-encroaching woods.  When it gets all grown up, it encourages snakes, possums, rats and other critters to visit Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.    

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...