Best ways to protect your chickens, their baby chicks, and their eggs from snakes. Find out how to keep snakes away from your chicken coop, herbs and plants that snakes do not like, snake prevention tips, a secret recipe to deter snakes and best buys on snake repellents.

Snake eating a chicken egg. Photo from Tedge's Photography. https://www.facebook.com/TedgesPhotos/

Chicken snakes, often called rat snakes are a threat to your chickens and their eggs. Eggs are a favorite delicacy for chicken snakes. The chicken snake's favorite food is mice and rats which is why some people allow them to hang around their chicken coops which is a very BAD idea. Many have found out the hard way, that a chicken snake will, not only eat the eggs but they will eat the chickens as well and are particularly fond of eating baby chicks. Their slow movement does not alert the roosters protective instincts. These snakes have been know to coil up in a hens nest and eat her eggs and if she does not lay one or tries to stop the snake  it will suck her head off her body in an effort to eat her. Live traps are a good way to catch a chicken snake but this method only works a couple of times. These snakes are smart and once they see their friends or relatives captured in a live trap they will not go near it. It sometimes helps to move the trap to different areas and camouflage it with brush. I like to use several methods to keep snakes away (below) that do really work. I plant herbs that snakes do not like, I use Murphy's oil soap, snake repellent, solar nite lights, solar fencing and traps and most importantly I got rid of their primary food source-rodents. (See herbs that repel snakes and more below).

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Herbs That Snakes Do Not Like Which will keep them away from your chickens

I had a severe problem with snakes getting in my chicken coop and hen house. I decided to use every way possible to keep them away. I made a snake repellent garden trail all the way around on the outside of my chicken coop and run two years ago and so far it is working. I used to get 5 to 6 huge chicken snakes and copperheads every year inside my hen house and the past two years I have only found one each year and that was when my hen's were broody.

​This is what I plant to repel snakes:
Garlic
Rosemary
Thyme
Marigold's
​Onions
Rauwolfia Serpentina (also called snake root or devil pepper-most often used for hypertension).
Tulbaghia Violacea (also called society garlic or pink agapanthus, species of flowering plant in the onion family Alliaceae)
Grow these herbs around the hen house and where your chickens roam. Sprinkle some in the chicken coop and nest boxes. See more snake repellent tips below.

How to Use Murphy's Oil Soap to keep snakes away From your chickens

Spray Murphy's Oil Soap in the hen house and nest boxes and around the hen house and play area-reduces or eliminates mold and mildew and repels snakes.

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How to Make your chicken coop less attractive to snakes

Make your chicken coop less attractive to snakes by gathering your eggs daily, keeping nest boxes clean, getting rid of mice and rats (their primary food source), planting herbs and plants that repel snakes, get a kitten and raise it in your chicken coop (cats eat rodents-a snake's main food source), use snake repellents and clean everything with a spray made from 1/8 cup of Murphy's oil soap to a gallon of water. Put in spray bottle and use to wipe down nest boxes, roosts, walls, and spray on floor of coop before putting fresh bedding down. See How to get rid of mice and rats safely below.

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Motherhen's Homemade Snake Repellent: 
"A good natural snake repellent that works for me is 
boiling a mixture of 2 bulbs of garlic, 2 tblsp. rosemary, 1/4 C. cinnamon, and 2 tblsp. of thyme together until bulbs of garlic are mushy. Strain well, cool and put it in a spray bottle. Spray nest boxes, hen house, around hen house, and yard. Most chicken snakes don't like the smell of it and snakes see with their nose so if they smell this rather than your eggs they will look somewhere else for their meal."

See How to Get Rid of Mice & Rats Safely

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