And Now There Are Five

I have bad news to report.  A snake got in with our chickens and ate one of them!  I'm glad I did not find it or I would have freaked out.  Tom called me at work one morning this week and told me he had bad news and proceeded to tell me how he had gone out to check on the chicks and only saw five of them huddled together in one corner of the pen.  On the other side was a big black snake with an obvious lump in its middle.  


Now we have these chicks in a pen made of boards and chicken wire inside our detached garage.  Inside the pen is a circle of cardboard about 18 inches tall that keeps drafts from reaching the chicks.  Tom said the snake was able to crawl into the pen through the chicken wire, but was unable to crawl back out since it had grown considerably in diameter.  I asked him if he killed it and he said, yes, that he shot it.  Now I had visions of our garage having bullet holes in the walls.  But he got a rake, fished the snake out of the pen, threw it outside and shot it with our 410 shotgun.  Yes, we have a gun.  You don't live in the country without some sort of protection.  Although, I'm not at all sure I could figure out how to shoot it if I were faced with an intruder.


At any rate, the snake is dead, and I really hate to have had to kill it.  It was a non-poisonous snake and most likely had spent the winter in our garage eating mice and rats.  But, I'm not sure what other option we had.  It would surely have come back and got another of our chickens as soon as it got hungry again had Tom let it go.


The good news is that the remaining 5 chicks are growing like crazy.  We have started giving them lettuce and swiss chard from the garden and they love it.  Here they are eating some that I hung in their pen this afternoon.

When we first started giving them greens, we just laid them in the pen.  The chicks were very wary of them at first and it took them a day or two to learn they were good to eat.  However, now they get excited when they see you coming with greens.  Today, I decided to try hanging them on the side of the cardboard ring.  It was hilarious to watch them figure out how to best get at the greens.  They could stretch their necks and reach them until they had eaten them up about half way.  Then they had to "hop" in order to reach them.  Did you know chickens could hop?!!


Tom has been working on a place to put them when they are big enough to move out of this brooder pen.  At the rate they are growing, it won't be long.  Stay tuned.