Chicken Woes

Laurie and Greg are co-owners of our chicken, which gives both families the freedom to go away for a few days. Now that we are in Colorado, Laurie and Greg are caring for the flock, but things are not going well.

The day we left, Laurie went to give the hens some kitchen scraps and gather the eggs. Instead of eggs, she found a huge blacksnake in one of the nests. Laurie rushed home to get Greg, but the snake was gone when Greg arrived.

Greg and Dennis dispatched two blacksnakes earlier this summer, but we have suspected another one was raiding the nests because some days we were getting only one or two eggs. We don’t like to kill blacksnakes because they eat rodents and even other snakes such as copperheads. However, the snakes’ favorite food seems to be chicken eggs.

We know only two ways to get rid of blacksnakes. One is to kill them directly. Dennis whacks them with an oak garden stake. The other way is to put a china egg in the nest. When a snake swallows the egg it will eventually die because it can neither digest nor eliminate the egg. This method seems cruel, but sometimes that is the only way to catch the snake. Now Laurie may resort to that method.

The second day we were gone Laurie found a red sex-link hen in the nest box with her head hanging out, dead as a doornail. This is unique in our many years of chicken keeping. Laurie said there was no sign of a struggle and there were no apparent injuries to the hen. Her death is a mystery.

Two red sex-link hens and a black sex-link hen 

Keeping chickens may seem like a win-win proposition, but that isn’t the case. Still, we have no intention of giving it up. I hope Laurie and Greg feel the same.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer