Today We Bought Three Eggs

Following the mink debacle, we have 32 hens left.  On average they give us 21 eggs each afternoon that we pick up.  The birds roam around all day long out in the pasture, scratching through cow patties for bugs and worms and "recycled" grain.  They'll chase june bugs and other critters that creep, crawl and fly.  They eat clover and other grasses.

Long about mid-morning, they'll make their way to the hen house and lay their eggs.  You can always tell when they've laid because they sing a little song as if they are proud of their accomplishment.  I'll have to record it one day and post it.  It is a lot prettier than the shrill, loud cry of the rooster as he exerts dominance over the flock.

We produce a good number of eggs and we eat a good number of eggs each day.  "It's power food!" one of our customers said.  Still, we went to the feed store and bought 3 brown eggs:

They aren't for eating.  Not for us, anyway.  These are chalk or ceramic eggs.  When I gathered eggs the other afternoon, the very last ceramic egg in the laying boxes was gone.  For every ceramic egg that goes missing, that means there's a dead or dying snake somewhere.

You see rat snakes (we call them chicken snakes) get into the hen house often and eat eggs.  When they are in the barn, I let them go as I am more than happy with them seeking out and eating rats.  But when they start eating our eggs, that's where I put my foot down.  I put a ceramic egg in the laying boxes closest to the little patch of woods.  The snakes slither into the hen house, curl up in the box and have themselves an egg breakfast.  Except, when they eat a ceramic egg, they develop a massive case of constipation and end up dying from the blockage.  Sometimes, we'll find the skeleton and the ceramic egg and we're able to use it again.

What I've learned to do is before I put them in the boxes, I'll get a marks-a-lot permanent marker and put a stripe around the egg.  The ceramic eggs look so much like a real egg, that I'll tend to pick them up.  They don't crack on the edge of the black cast iron skillet!  The snakes or the chickens don't seem to mind the black stripe, but it really helps us out.

Here's the nest with some good old country eggs along with the "snake bait" egg.  You see what I mean?  It looks so realistic.  The stripe really helps.

We're coming into prime snake season as it warms up, so we'll watch to see how long our striped eggs last.  A ceramic egg costs as much as a dozen real eggs cost.  I've heard a golf ball works just as well, but I kind of like supporting our local feed store and the eggs have a more pastoral feel than a golf ball does.  Beware serpents!  Things aren't always what they seem...

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.

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.

Serpents in the Garden

One afternoon last week I was in the backyard after filling the cattle trough with water.  I stood there admiring Tricia's rose bushes.  The pink ones are putting on a show.  So pretty!  As I was standing there looking at them, something else caught my eye.  Can you see it?

I'll give you a hint:

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?  Genesis 3:1

See it now?

No, this wasn't a talking snake.  Or at least I didn't stick around to find out!!  This is a Blue Racer snake and it is called this because they can slither up to 4 miles per hour!  They grow up to 36-60 inches long.  Blue Racers eat small mammals and other snakes, so I left it alone, unharmed.  He can eat all the small mammals and snakes he wants around our house.  Tricia wasn't excited about this decision; however, I justified it in the confident knowledge that Tricia could run faster than 4 mph if this snake was chasing her!

Another Snake We Won't Kill

We were introduced to snakes back in Genesis in the Garden of Eden.  Vile.  Evil.  Devious.  Nasty.  Scheming.  Lying.  Treacherous.  We hate snakes.  We have snakes around here.  Not talking snakes, mind you, but hardly a week goes by that we don't see snakes.  Mostly garter snakes.  We don't ever kill garter snakes.  They are so prevalent around here.  They'll come inside the house sometimes.  We pick them up and toss them back out in the landscaping beds, so they can go about their business of eating frogs and lizards.

Next we have chicken snakes.  Lots of 'em.  In the past, we'd kill them.  We didn't want them eating our eggs.  We'd kill them with a shovel.  We'd kill them with a board or a pipe or any blunt object.  We'd kill them by placing ceramic and wooden eggs in the nesting boxes.  When the fake eggs disappeared, we secretly rejoiced, knowing that the serpent was going to die of a really, really bad case of constipation.  But then... things changed.

Our rat problem out at the barn got out of control.  More rats than we could count.  I poisoned them.  I shot them off the rafters with a .22 rifle loaded with rat shot.  I used classic rat traps.  I even had great success with a 5 gallon bucket half filled with water to drown the rats.  But the best thing we ever did was to stop killing the chicken snakes.  Allowing the chicken snakes to live paid dividends in terms of drastically reducing our rat population.  Chicken snakes get very large and can be scary, but they are docile and generally don't bother you if you don't bother them.

So today, Russ walked out in the garage and yelled, "Hey, there's a big chicken snake right outside the door!"  Except it wasn't a chicken snake.  It was a speckled king snake!  These guys are our friends.  They eat birds, rodents, frogs, lizards, and other SNAKES.  They kill by constricting their prey.  For that reason, we always set these guys free.  Here he is right here:

King Snake in the Garage

King snakes grow to around 48 inches long.  He was shaking his tail at me like a rattle snake, but he never did strike at me.  The speckled king snake is aptly named because every scale has a yellow-white spot.  It is really quite a beautiful snake.  They are gentle.  In fact, some people keep them as pets.  Not us, we'll get him out of our garage and back out into the landscaping so he can do his thing.

Speckled King Snake

I picked him up with a garden tool.  I think he was happy to be back outside.  Garages aren't their natural habitat.  The speckled king snake actually likes wet areas.  Well, he's in the right place.

I hope he stays around.  We want him to take care of "bad" snakes in our area - snakes like the Cottonmouth and the Copperhead.  Maybe he'll find his queen snake and make a family.

Got 'Em!

For the past two days we've been talking about the snake that ate two of momma hen's chicks and the process by which we were going to take care of the egg & chick eating serpent.  Yesterday afternoon we were milking the cows and goat and Benjamin was gathering eggs.  I glanced over in time to see him running out of the hen house faster than Usain Bolt.  "What's going on?" I yelled.  "A snake is in one of the nesting boxes and he's got an egg!" Benjamin exclaimed!

Oh boy!  We walked into the hen house and disturbed the snake's supper.

I mean, that ol boy had a mouth full! His skin was so stretched out it looked like he was about to burst.  He was so busy trying to get the egg down his mouth that he didn't notice us watching him.

That was a fatal mistake.  It allowed me time to go get a shovel in the barn that we keep in there for shoveling out cow poop.  It works nicely for chopping off chicken snakes' heads, too!

The chicken snake fought til the end, striking at us harmlessly with his mouth open. Part of me really hates to kill a harmless snake, but this guy was eating our eggs and baby chicks and would have scared my wife half to death if she would have walked in on him.  Not to mention the fact that sometimes we gather eggs after dark and "feel" for the eggs in each nest in order to gather them. Putting our hands on a big old snake in the dark would have been a scary thing, even if the snake is harmless.

We liberated the snake's head from his body and threw the snake carcass into the barnyard as a warning to all other chicken snakes in the vicinity.  Lo and behold a hen came along and began pecking at the snake and commenced to eating on him. Pretty soon the other hens joined in the fun.

Funny how fast the tables turn in which the hunter becomes the prey!  Well, at least the two remaining baby chicks and our eggs are safe.  Or are they?  Maybe this old boy has a wife?  Or a brother or sister?  Hmmm.  Oh well.  If our ceramic eggs don't get 'em, my shovel will.

Two Less "Tweets"

"I've got my eye on you two!"

Our Maker's Acres Family Farm is not on Twitter, but with baby chicks running around the barn, we have our fair share of "tweets".  Sadly, there are two less tweets from the original four.  Yesterday's Post (Click here to read) left you with a teaser at the end about the demise of two of momma hen's offspring.

In the photo above, momma hen appears to be alone, but as you can tell she's looking down.  She is protecting her little family by keeping a watchful eye on them. She's giving them freedom, but at the same time she is ready to step in, if necessary, to help them out.  So what is she looking at?  Well, this for starters:

I can't quite get that high up on the gate, Momma

Where's the other one? Ah, there she is:

We'll keep trying, though.  One of these days, we'll get there.

But where are the other two?  This was a great mystery until last week.  Benjamin was at a school function so I was gathering eggs for him.  I picked up eggs out in the pasture in the chicken tractor, then I gathered some from the henhouse, some from the goat barn, behind the freezer we use to store chicken feed in and then some in the nesting boxes in the goat milking stall.  The last place was a couple of nests that hens made atop some hay stacked in the goat milking stall.

When I reached in to pick up the eggs, I'm not kidding you, a five foot long snake was in the nest, coiled around about a half dozen eggs with one in his mouth.  I ran for a shovel, swinging wildly, but the snake escaped underneath the pallet.  It was a snake that is harmless to humans - a rat snake or a chicken snake, as we call them. Although they are harmless, they get huge and thus are scary when you come across them.

They are named after what they eat.  I have a buddy that will NOT kill them.  He calls them 'heat-seeking missiles' that rid his barn of rats.  He's right, you know. But... they'll also rid your barn of baby chicks and I'm 100% certain that that snake had the #2 chicken combo meal off the value menu one day last week.   That's where the other two chicks went.  So what to do?

Well, I'm not like my buddy.  I'm going to kill the snake.  Here's how.  I purchased four ceramic eggs from the feed store.

I'll place them in the nest atop the hay and the snake will eat the ceramic eggs thinking they are real eggs.  Except these eggs will give him a case of constipation that no amount of Metamucil will heal. The snake will be stopped up and he'll slither off and die.  I'll discover the missing ceramic egg one day in a snake skeleton under the barn floor or a pallet and I'll recover it and use it again.

So I placed one ceramic egg in with the other three real eggs in one of the nests.  The ceramic egg is the egg in the 11 o'clock position in the photo below.  Can you see the problem? They look TOO much like real eggs.

I did have to make one change since these look and feel SO much like a real egg - I added a racing stripe to differentiate them.  Otherwise, when gathering eggs each day, Benjamin would mistake the ceramic eggs for a real one and Tricia would discover it when she tries to break it on the cast iron skillet when making an omelet for breakfast.  We can't have that!

Putting a racing stripe on the ceramic eggs ~ They're racing to get into a chicken snake in the henhouse!

The chicks, hopefully, after watching their sisters become snake food are being vigilant and watchful for the snake, seeking protection beneath their momma's protective wings.  We hope the hen is on her guard as well, protecting her babies under her wings.  You know, this story has relevance to humans in addition to our fine feathered friends in the barnyard.  The Good Lord wants to protect us under his wings.  Sometimes, however, we want to do things our own way.  We're hard-headed ( tête dur) and venture away from Him.

There is a Serpent out there that means to do us harm.  He wishes to devour us and that's exactly what he'll do, too.  If we're wise, we'll stay under the protective cover that our Great God provides.

He will cover you with His pinions, And under His wings you may seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.  Psalm 91:4

The Serpent in the Garden

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”  Genesis 3:1

Image Credit

Walking around the garden is indeed a peaceful activity and it is a lot more peaceful when there are no snakes.  In the late afternoon, when the sun is casting long shadows across the landscape, I like to walk around in the garden just admiring His handiwork and enjoying the great outdoors.  So yesterday, in the cool of the evening...

I was walking through the garden, checking out the sweet corn ripening and picking some squash and cucumbers.  It is always such a nice time of day and it is very peaceful and rejuvenating...

I was looking through the rainforest-like foliage of the cucumber vines growing on our trellis made out of a cattle panel searching for cucumbers to pick.  Sometimes they are hard to find and when you do finally see the cucumber, it is over-ripe and bitter and good for nothing except perhaps save it for seeds or throw it over for the chickens to enjoy.  I did find some perfectly sized, crisp cukes that will be a refreshing appetizer once chilled, sliced and sprinkled with apple cider vinegar and salt and pepper.

As I was reaching in to pick a nice cucumber, something amongst the vines caught my eye, making me jerk my outstretched arm back...

It was this guy - he's a harmless rat snake.  We call them chicken snakes around here.  They don't have fangs but very small teeth and they primarily 'make their living' eating rats.  However, and to our dismay, they also eat eggs.

I have a friend who tells me that they are like a heat-seeking missile, and they will seek out rats and kill them.  Therefore you shouldn't kill them.  They are good to have around your place - unless you have chickens (and/or a wife!!)  I waited for the evil serpent to speak to me and fortunately that did NOT occur.  After deliberating for a brief minute on what I should do, surveying the pros (elimination of rats) and the cons (disappearing eggs, baby chicks, and an extremely unhappy wife), I did what Eve SHOULD HAVE DONE in the Garden many years ago.  I went to the garage and got my Fiskars hedge shears, reached into the vines, and I lopped his head off.  The blood flowed freely from the now headless snake, and I picked up the head of the snake and tossed it over the fence to the chickens.

Then I pulled the headless snake out of the cucumber vines and chopped him up in little pieces - bite-sized morsels, you might say, for the chickens to enjoy.  The predator literally became the prey.  The hens couldn't hide their exuberance.  Oh, what joy to behold! 

Snake snack for the chickens

The hens clucked and thanked me as they grabbed their supper 'to go' and scurried off into the pasture with other hens who didn't get a snake snack in hot pursuit.

I hate to eat and run, but...

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 

14 The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,

Cursed are you more than all cattle,

And more than every beast of the field;

On your belly you will go,

And dust you will eat

All the days of your life;

This serpent in the garden was cursed indeed!

Snake in the Barn!

No, I didn't hold a political event in our barn today with a politician giving a campaign speech.  I'm talking about a literal snake in the barn.  After I got in from work, I changed into my work clothes and Tricia and I headed to the barn and called in the 'girls' for the late afternoon milking.  After cleaning them up, hobbling one of their legs, and giving them a little dairy ration and alfalfa, we started to milk them.  Benjamin came in the barn with his egg basket to collect the eggs.  The chickens lay primarily in some nesting boxes made out of milk crates, but there is one nest under the counter by Rosie's milking stall.  Well, an event occurred that had all the ladies standing around gossipping and carrying on for quite a while afterwards:

"Did you hear what happened in the barn?"

When Benjamin came to check that nest, he shouted, "Dad, a snake!"  It created quite a commotion in the barn.  We both put our milking buckets down and I grabbed a shovel.  As I suspected, this wasn't a bad snake.  It was a Texas Rat Snake.  We call them chicken snakes because they are often found in barns and like to eat eggs.  They look kind of scary because they can get real big and they are great climbers and can hang on rafters and from trees.  I've seen them get as large as eight feet long.  This one was a juvenile and was only around three feet long.

To be honest, I didn't want to kill him at first, but I quickly changed my mind. Wives and snakes don't mix well in close proximity to one another.  Although we need assistance killing the rats in the barn, the snakes also eat our eggs and we can't have that, can we?  After some theatrics, I managed to kill the snake and threw him out to the chickens.

Well what do we have here?

The hens were very curious and encircled the poor old snake.

They pecked at him trying to figure out how to eat him.  Chickens are omnivores and will feast on snake meat like nobodies' business.

The predator becomes the prey

There were no mysterious bulges in the snake so he hadn't had a chance to eat an egg recently.  I bet he had just slithered in from the woods.  We do have some fake eggs made of chalk and wood that we keep in the nesting boxes in the barn specifically to combat snakes.  The snakes will eat the fake egg and won't be able to constrict/crush/digest it like they would a real egg and would end up dying.  We had a couple of the fake eggs that went missing and I later found them under the floor to the feed room in the barn.  The remains of the snakes that ate them had already rotted away.

After the snake was disposed of, we went back to milking and Benjamin completed his egg gathering. Nothing like a little excitement to shake our normal routine up!

A scare in the 'chicken infirmary'

We have a small barn that we call the goat barn.  This is where Annie gets put into each night to keep her away from Nellie so that we'll have goat milk for us in the morning.  Currently, the goat barn is doubling as our chicken infirmary.

Our hens have a really bad habit of getting too close to our cows.  They scurry around them during the morning milking and they also like to wait for flies to land on the cows' legs and then they catch the flies and eat them.  This is a dangerous activity that inevitably leads to problems as the cows aren't looking out for what's underneath their feet.  A four pound hen is no match for an 800 - 900 pound cow.  A couple of months ago we nursed one hen back to health after she had been stepped on.  Currently, we've got another hen in the chicken infirmary that we're feeding and watering during her rehabilitation.

Yesterday, Russ came running and told me that there was a big snake in with the injured chicken.  As I opened the door, I spotted the snake.  He was hard to miss.


Rat Snake

This is a rat snake.  They're also called chicken snakes around here because they can be found in close proximity to chickens many times as they LOVE to eat chicken eggs.  They are harmless to humans (other than scaring them!).  They are like heat-seeking missiles that seek out and destroy rats.  This is a good thing - especially in our barn.  I really want to just leave him alone.  However, the sad fact remains that he eats eggs and has made his way into our barn where the chicken nesting boxes are. 

A greater point of consideration is the reality that my wife goes out to the barn daily and it will be impossible for a BIG snake and my wife to coexist in the same general location.  Tricia does not like snakes.  So, the snake must die.  I asked Russ to run and get a shovel.  In the prior picture you couldn't really scale the snake to see how big he was - in the picture below you can tell.  I'm 5 foot 8 inches tall.  I'm not holding him by the very end of the tail. I would estimate he measured about 6 feet long.  They can grow to be around 10 feet long.

Over five feet long

Snakes causing trouble comes as no surprise,though.  They've been causing trouble since the beginning:

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
And dust you will eat All the days of your life;15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.” - Genesis 3: 13-15

See what I mean about there being enmity between the snake and the woman?!  The hens gathered around the body of the snake just to rubber-neck or possibly to try and figure out how to eat the snake - the hunter becomes the prey.

Dont' tread on me!

After taking the picture below, I chopped up Mr. Snake into bite-size pieces for the chickens to snake, err, snack on.  Chickens are omnivores, after all.


Let's say grace before we eat, shall we?

So killing the snake was a positive occurrence for most involved:

• For the rats,
• For the chickens and their eggs,
• But most importantly, For my wife! (She's in South Texas visiting her Mom and she's already texted me asking, "What's this I hear about a snake!!!!")  Russ must have called his momma!

It's all taken care of, dear.