It seems many of our house sits these days also include looking after chooks (hens, chickens,fowl). It certainly adds a lot of flavor to gardening when you can use their manure for compost and they also help by keeping garden pests under control.
Recently we returned to one of our rural house sits. In July 2009 apart from looking after many farm animals we were also caring for five chooks. At that time they were certainly alive and very healthy, laying eggs daily.
However, by January 2010 three had ‘fallen off the perch’ (died) and the remaining two had stopped laying eggs as ‘they were too old now’. To be honest I am not that experienced with chooks so thought that it must be so.
Imagine my horror though as I entered the chook pen in the early morning to let them out for the day to see a brown snake coming out from under their straw!!!!! Once it saw me it retreated into the coop. Funnily enough I also retreated.
Luckily the home owners were still there so I quickly told them and they managed to remove the snake, it was five foot long. The very next day they collected two eggs.
From now on when I hear people say their chooks are ‘falling off the perch’ or ’stopped laying because they are too old’ I am going on high alert – it just might be a snake eating the eggs and killing the chooks.
Who knew collecting eggs could be such an adventure.
If you need to keep snakes away from your garden please check out these ideas
