Almost every day these past two weeks, when I go out to put the chickens up for the night, there is an egg that’s been eaten. Nothing left but some slime, maybe a bit of shell. The other eggs are untouched - beautiful and perfect (if sometimes a little dirty).
If I make an effort to go out and collect them during the day, nothing has been eaten - so this event seems to happen at dusk. We wondered: Was one of the chickens getting into the habit of eating the eggs? And if so, why was the shell also gone? Would they eat the entire thing?
I had definitely been noticing some rat activity in the coop, especially around dusk. I no longer keep the chicken food in the coop - I keep it out in the run, so that if a rat wants it, they’ll have to brave being out in the open to get it (owls and hawks, where ARE you???). At night, I bring it inside. I keep the water outside in the run at night, too, though it’s in the shady part of the coop during the day. I decided that it was rats eating the eggs. They were crawling up the ladder (a flat piece of wood, basically) into the coop and gobbling it up, right before the chickens started making their way up to go to bed. The chickens don’t really use the ladder - they fly in and out of the coop instead - so I removed the ladder entirely. This seemed to stop the egg problem and I was patting myself on the back.
Then one night I waited until later than usual to go get the eggs and shut in the chickens, and darn it! An egg eaten. My working hypothesis was, and still is, that rats had figured how to get up into the roost without the aid of the ladder. They are canny little buggers.
However….
I found this in the coop this morning. Not up in the roost, but down on the ground, dead. Stretched out to its full length, it was probably about a foot. So a small snake, then, and it had clearly eaten something before expiring.
You may recall that we found a sharp-tailed snake under a brick in our garden last year. I believe this dead snake is the same kind. To be sure, I wrote to Gary at California Herps and asked for verification. He’s always so responsive and helpful when I have a lizard or snake question. Here’s a copy of our conversation:
Me: Hi Gary, I found this snake dead in our chicken coop. If stretched out, would be about a foot long. The only snakes I have ever seen in our garden are sharp-tailed. Do you think this is also a sharp-tailed?
Gary: Hi Elizabeth. From the size, the scales, the tail, what look like dark bars on the underside, and your past history, it could be a sharp-tailed snake. There are three other species of similar-looking small snakes in your area, but they don't have the blunt tail with a sharp tip that this one appears to have. All of them eat small invertebrates and small mammals but I don't think any of them would pose a threat to your chickens. The larger snakes in your area - gophersnakes, rattlesnakes, whipsnakes, racers, and kingsnakes - might try to eat chicks and maybe eggs, but I don't think they would try to eat adult chickens.
Me: Thanks Gary! I really appreciate your expertise. I’m not worried about the chickens, but we have had something predating on the eggs.... I can’t imagine this little guy could have managed that though. I assumed he was eating slugs. We also have some huge rats, so I would very much like some bigger snakes in our garden! I’ve been trying to attract them for years, so it’s exciting to see some activity finally.
Gary: The subject of the possibility of snakes in California preying on chicken eggs came up recently when I read an article about a rat snake in the east that ate a golf ball that was put in a chicken coop to encourage egg laying. There are no rat snakes in California, but gopher snakes and California king snakes have been known to eat birds eggs and chicks, and could probably prey on chicken eggs.
Well, as you can imagine, I found that exchange fascinating. I still don’t think this little guy is eating the eggs, but WHY was it in the coop? And what WAS it eating (could it handle baby rats???)? How did it die? And are there other snakes in our garden that I’ve just not seen? As usual, the answer to a question begets more questions.
Time to set up the wildlife camera in the coop, to record both day and night. We can answer a few questions that way, one of them being, who is eating the eggs? I love a good mystery.