Snakes

Holy Moses....thank goodenss I don't live in Texas!! I have no advice only to tell you that you are very brave b/c I would have run screaming like a little girl!!!

Here is an answer from a member of Backyard Chicken Forum. It means working, but most good answers do. (We have a dog near our pen and he usually chases off snakes, but we have to restrain him or he becomes the predator). :
If you want to discourage snakes, you must make sure that your yard in general, but especially around your chicken pens is competely clear and mowed. Leave no bushes or junk piles for them to have cover to hide under. Snakes hate crossing open areas without the cover of brush and high grass becuase it leaves them vulnerable to bird predation. Second, fill the gaps or holes around your pen with spray insulation foam. Third, if you can, keep baby chicks in brooder and grow out pens constructed with 1/4 inch hardware cloth. Fourth, collect your eggs regularly. Leaving eggs out provides opportunity and temptation. Lastly, cut down or eliminate your rodent population, which is probably what attracteda snake to your place initially. I klnow, people always say they don't have a rodent population, but you probably have more rodent's around your pens than you realize. Mice love to drink from water dishes, eat fallen food, and so do rats. So, keep the food stored in rodentproof containers, put uneaten food away at night, don't spill food when you are feeding. Use exclusion and traps to reduce your rodent population. Do these things and you will have less snakes. It's that simple.
I have heard the spray foam idea before and heard that it works well. We had to put 1/4 hardware cloth on our brooder. Something kept killing older chicks but wasn't able to pull them through the 1 inch chicken wire.
Good luck! Love those chickens!!! (Millie Fleurs are my fav.)

I'm not one for killing anything, including snakes. I would try a more humane way. You can call a wild life trapper and they will come relocate the snake. If you can not find a trapper in your phone book, call the non emergency police line or the animal control and see if they can help you remove it from your property.
Then, google some ideas to keep the snakes away. That is much better than killing them after they arrive.

Amazingly we haven't had any issues with snakes but boy have we had issues with rats!! If you can build a pen with the chicken wire burried in the ground by at least 4-6 inches. it helps deter snakes and anything trying to dig in. As for the cage with babies in it try getting a rabbit cage with smaller holes thus the snake can't get in. board up any holes you make find in your coup will also help but doesn't work if you have the chickens in your garage like I do.

reduce any use of a heat lamp because that really attracks snakes. We keep all of our babies in the house in a cage untill they are a few months old and no longer need the heat lamp outside. We also do an egg check multiple times a day but only cause I'm a sahm and our 2 yr old loves to help bring in the eggs.

they are saying they are so bad bc of all the rain we had. My dad lives on lakes Granbury and has seen about 10 in the last week. My dad shoots them with a bb gun. Doesnt want to run the risk of them getting the grandkids or his dogs.

We live on a small lake in Garland and we've always had snakes. There are two things we do that work great. You can buy sulfur at a feed/farm supply store and sprinkle it around the outside of your yard. The snakes don't like it becuse of the smell and it is an irritant to their skin. This is the best solution for us because we have kids in the yard and it is not harmful if they get it on them. My husband does this in the spring and after big rains (when it would wash it away). We still see the snakes in the lake and on rocks around the lake but when we have the sulfer out they are never in our yard! Another option is Snake-Away. We got this at our local nursery and it was expsensive but also works. Good luck!

SNAKES!? I felt squirmish reading this question and these answers until I realized that I was searching local questions! YIKES!? Do you guys live near fields or anything? I'm so afraid of snakes, esp. since we moved to an a new house that has an iron fence that overlooks a "prairie" area with a pond in South Irving.

Sorry to hear about the snake eating your chicks, but I don't think killing the snakes as you encounter them will help your problem. I think the best thing you can do is make sure the area surrounding the pen is not a good habitat for snakes. Make sure there are no piles of wood, tin, or anything else which provides a hiding place for a snake - this includes bushy plants and lots of leaves. If there's enough room under/between something for you to push a stick under it, it will be easy for a snake to get under.

I would suggest making a funnel trap in combination with a drift fence. This is sort of like the suggestion with the wire mesh, but the trap will get the snake into the trap so that you can relocate it without risking injury to yourself or the snake. First, you put up the drift fence surrounding the chicken pen and then place the trap along the side of the fence. Here's a video with a very nice trap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmlXMc1MhYs. It doesn't say how to make one, but it looks like a store-bought minnow trap.

Oh, Donna J.'s suggestion about the rope will not be any help at all. Snakes don't care about ropes being in their path, they'll go right over them. That's just an old wives' tale.

It should subside pretty soon. The are out and awake and looking for love, as well as food. As soon as it starts getting much hotter and they are less amourous they won't need to hunt quite as much.

Snakes are really bad this year.I have heard of the golf ball thing. i had an old woman tell me one time to put a rope down and that snakes wouldn't cross it. That would be worth a try.

Maybe you can mail the snakes to Tina.. Just kidding.. I hate snakes, but I know they are necessary. On the ranches they shoot the rattlers and bury the heads deep, so no one can step on the fangs.

The best thing that worked for our grandmother was to use the chicken wire buried like Elizabeth suggested. Also grandfather also added a fine mesh wire around the bottom 6 to 8 inches (cannot remember now) of the pen, between the chicken pen and the chicken wire..

Cats would help with the snake problem, but if that is not an option, I used to be a home health nurse and one of my very elderly patients told me when he was a young boy his family used to but sulphur around the chicken coupe. He said it was irritating to the snakes belly. It sounds like that may be worth a try. Good luck!!

we have 3 dogs - the 2 mini dachsunds are on the snakes immediately, they really do a good job of keeping them away - and my chickens now that they are older, don't have a problem with them

Use "Rabbit Wire" on your pens instead of chicken wire. Holes are only a couple of centimeters square and (depending on the size of the pen) you can line them in the bottom of the pen covered with dirt after attaching them to the side walls of the lower frame. BUT AS ANOTHER STATED- keep all surroundings clean and mowed down low.