Trouble in the Chicken Coop

WARNING:  There are snake pictures below!

There was a mama hen sitting on 7 fertile (I hope) eggs and 1 wooden egg. Sometimes the chickens get the idea to peck the eggs and keeping a couple of wooden eggs in there usually stops them from pecking eggs. And, when a snake eats a wooden egg, he dies!

This morning, as always, just after daylight I went out and let the chickens out. I checked on the mama to e sure she was ok. She always is but she’s the softest of all my chickens and the only time I can pet her is when she’s sitting on eggs so I usually pet her a bit when I’m out there. Today was day 7 of her sitting on eggs. It takes 21 days for eggs to hatch. I check to make sure she hasn’t confiscated eggs from other laying boxes because the last thing I need is for her to hatch about 20 babies. Her 7 eggs were marked with “5/3” which was the day she began sitting on the eggs so any eggs under her not marked . . they’re mine.

Everything was fine. This morning was my knitting time with my friends and I was going to bring eggs in case anyone wanted any. I was one egg shy of having another full dozen so I went out to the coop to see if there were any more eggs. By 10 a.m., there are usually several  more eggs. None. I thought . . I’d better check under mama hen. NO! All the eggs were gone . . even the wooden egg, so I knew that meant a snake had been in there since I was out there earlier. I looked for him and didn’t see him anywhere so I went back to the house, got 4 eggs from yesterday that had not been in the fridge yet, marked them “5/9” and put them under her.

I called Vince at work and asked him if he’d check for eggs and snakes when he came home for lunch. Told him the whole story. He did and he got three eggs but no snake.

I went to knitting and when I got home, I went out to check on her and there he was! I think he had a belly ache! He was all curled up trying to crush that wooden egg.

See him way up there? There was no way I could reach him with anything I had. We have a snake stick with a hook on the end of it but it won’t reach that far. I keep a shovel near the coop but that wasn’t going to do me any good if I couldn’t reach him. I thought about a gun but figured I’d shoot holes in the roof and knock out windows and decided I’d better call Vince to come home.

Sorry, the picture is kinda blurry. Between zooming and my hands shaking . . it’s the best picture I could get.

Vince to the rescue! Only two times in five years I’ve had to call Vince to come home and both times it involved chickens!

Vince used a long piece of PVC pipe to knock him down. I had already shooed all the chickens out of the coop, removed the sitting hen and closed the door so they couldn’t come back in. Do you know that when that crazy snake fell, he went inside the egg box where the mama’s eggs were and was trying to eat one of those. Vince shot and killed the snake, inside the egg box without even breaking an egg. He’s amazing! 

All the chicken eggs were crushed but I did get my wooden egg back! All washed and ready to go back inside the coop.

The good news is this: Even though the ice cream I fixed for myself before going out to the coop was melted, it still tasted yummy!

It’s Blue Bell’s new Bride’s Cake . . so good. I guess you have to wonder about someone who can go out and chop a snake open, remove a wooden egg, wash it, put it back in the coop and then come in and eat a bowl of ice cream. That’s life in the country I suppose. I think I hear the beach calling my name!  🙂

Poor mama chicken. She had all her babies eaten, then I chunked her out of the nest in case the snake tried to get her again .. she’s going to have quite a story to tell these babies when they hatch!