Protecting Your Fowls: How to Keep Coops Safe from Snakes

Nature is all about maintaining balance, which is why the predator-prey food chain keeps ecosystems in order. However, this system isn’t always helpful when you’re investing in raising farm animals. Since they’re naturally defenseless against predators, intruders entering their dwellings are dangerous to them and yourself. For this reason, you should enact safety precautions against these uninvited guests.

Spotting Signs of Snake Inditrations

Snakes aren’t naturally harmful animals. In fact, they prey on rats, mice, and other pests to cull their population around urban and rural locations. However, snakes can also eat other small animals if they’re hungry enough. This makes them a troublesome issue for farmers.

Snakes won’t always make their presence known, even after sneaking into your property. This is why you should notice potential warning signs left by these intruders. If your egg production drops or chicks and hens start becoming missing, they might have gotten eaten by snakes.

Protecting Your Fowls from Snakes

Snakes can devastate your chicken coop by eating eggs, chicks, and even full-grown fowls. Even if you can drive a snake away, suffering a bite from a snake can spell death for your flock. Thankfully, there are ways to protect your flock from these sneaky reptiles.

In this article, we’ll share three ways to protect your fowls from sneaky intruders.

Find Holes and Gaps

Chicken coops need to have proper ventilation to give fowls the proper air quality they need. Anything too hot or too cold can make them sick and infect other farm animals. Although you need to have airways open, you should be cautious about spaces or crevices where snakes can enter.

Look at your chicken coop’s roof, windows, or even floors for gaps larger than a quarter of an inch. These holes are enough to let a small yet problematic snake infiltrate your property. Remember to perform these inspections on your closed dwellings as well. You can opt to install chicken wire or hardware cloth to cover these gaps with durable material.

Maintain Your Property

Snakes are cautious when it comes to stalking prey, which is why they need to jump from one hiding spot to another to avoid detection. If your property is pristine and well-kept, snakes aren’t likely to enter your property. This is because snakes cannot expose themselves to higher predators like hawks and owls.

You can clean your property by trimming tall grasses, bushes, and other greenery leading to your chicken coops. You can also plant natural remedies like lemongrass and rosemary to dissuade snakes from entering your property’s borders.

Keep Your Coops Rodent-Free

Keep in mind that snakes hunt within their scope in the predator-prey food chain. For example, snakes are naturally attracted to rodents as their natural prey. This is why a gathering of rodents at your property can invite snakes as well. By keeping it rodent-proof, you’ll also decrease the chances of getting visited by snakes and other predators.

Conclusion

Dealing with a live snake is never easy, even if you’ve trapped them into a corner. These aggressive animals can react unexpectedly if you’re inexperienced in handling them. To safely remove them, you’ll need to hire an expert to arrive at a moment’s notice. For this reason, you should look for preventative measures to keep them off your property instead.

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