Six Figs Farm LLC

We have some big snakes that are a part of our farm ecosystem. We have seen two of them together, and, since they kind of look alike, there might be more. I’m not great at snake id, but at a guess, we have some 5-6 foot rat snakes. We have no rat or mouse problems.

One morning, about a week ago, one of them got caught up in our deer fence. We found it mid-day, and it was overheated and lethargic. We freed it, poured some cool water over it, and placed it in the shade of the forest. It stayed there all day, but there was some movement. Next time we checked, it was gone.

Yesterday afternoon, I went in to the duck and goose yard to check on our flock. This is what I saw…

The ducks were playing in their pools, oblivious. If you look closely under the tree…..The geese were clearly waiting for me to handle the situation.

One of our geese is still laying. It’s very late in the season for a goose to lay eggs- the others stopped in May. But, we are still getting an egg every other day from one of our goosey girls. Goose eggs are huge, and hard as rocks.

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No gratitude! I saved your life, snake, and you eat our egg? I took the egg away, and removed the very big, quite unhappy snake to another location on our property. No, I didn’t kill him/her. Killing it would just make space for another one to move in. And we don’t want the population of rats, mice, and other things the snake is eating to grow uncontrolled. We’ll take more measures to secure our eggs- checking for them more often, and leaving the electric net fencing on during the day. If we make eggs really difficult to get, hopefully the story will end there. The snake might get an egg or two, but that’s not the end of the world.