My ducks always try to eat Jasmine's food when I feed her.I just always give Jasmine extra. I can't keep them from it since they stay in the pen together.. They get along so that works out good for us. Jasmine doesn't mind them eating with her. They all eat together, I feed them all at the same time and somethimes they want to eat a little catfood and sometimes they don't. Maybe if you just left it alone they would eat just a little, my ducks eat what they want (which isn't much at all) so maybe your chickens wouldn't keep eating the catfood if you just let them eat what they want.

I used to use moth balls around the outside of the hen house where the chickens couldn't get to them cause I thougth they would try and eat them, but one got out and stayed away from them altogether. The mothballs work good for our area, also try getting a plastic egg, like what comes in a child's kitchen set, and put it in one of the nests, I have heard that once the egg is past a certain point, and the snake tries to break it inside and cannot, it also cannot regurgitate it back out. However I have seen a chicken snake have a duck egge a good foot down it's throught and get it back out when it saw me comming with a shovel to get it. But that snake was over six feet long too. Good luck getting it, I know it can be very frustrating.

Your post last week reminded me that it was time to clean my chicken coop! So Saturday morning I did the deed and remembered something that I forgot to point out in my earlier post. Maybe you already noticed this, but FWIW: Hay or straw works differently as a bedding than does the other common bedding material - wood shavings. With shavings, the manure and shavings clump together, almost in sheets or mats. The dense mats seem to trap a lot of moisture and ammonia - trap it, that is, until you eventually clean the coop and almost fall over backwards from the smell. Hay/straw is different. The poops dessicate and fall through the straw as dust. You probably noticed that after you remove all the straw, there is a thin layer of brown dust on the floor? That's pure, dried chicken poop! And it is still very high in nitrogen. I scoop it up with a snow shovel and add it into the compost pile along with the straw. I wanted to see what would happen if I used ONLY straw and poop dust as compost ingredients, so I built a new pile using just these two materials. I sprinkled the poop dust on top of the straw and watered it gently, so that the dust would trickle down into the pile. Within 24 hours, the pile was blazing hot. I don't use a thermometer, but I'm guessing the pile must have been 120 degrees at the very least - probably closer to 130-140 at the core. -Diggity

Patty, I really don't think I am brave at all. I am a huge chicken and venomous snakes simply terrify me. I just do what I can to survive. I knew, realistically speaking, that we'd have venomous snakes when we moved to a rural area. Knowing it would happen, though, is not the same thing as having it happen! I just don't think I realized how many we'd see some years nor did I understand how much the close encounters would affect me. I am, truly, a big fraidy-cat. I will say that living in the country is not for sissies. Venomous snake encounters are not nearly as frightening as running into a cougar, panther, feral pig, rutting deer or rabid skunk....all of which we've encountered here. And, when you buy formerly "raw" land where local residents have hunted for decades, you WILL encounter poachers on your land and they WILL tell you that they've always hunted on this land and they aren't going to stop now just because you bought the land and put a house on it. And you'd better be armed and ready to defend yourself, and you'd better call the sherriff and report each incident and make it clear you will prosecute, which is only possible if your land is properly posted, by the way. So, not all snakes are animals..... We cleared out all the human snakes found on our property in just a couple of years, but the actual reptiles will be with us forever because we're so close to the Red River. I love, love, love living in the country and there are MANY enjoyable wildlife experiences.....bunnies, birds, fish, turtles, lizards, frogs, toads, squirrels, foxes, bats, dragonflies and damselflies, etc. I've had the great fortune to observe both bald eagles and golden eagles flying overhead or sitting on the tops of haybarns or trees. How wonderful is that? And, 99.9% of the people you encounter are wonderful, but there are a few that are scarey. So, you take the good with the bad and just try to go with the flow. Carol, I am as careful as I can be.....and, truly, I feel like God is watching over me and pray he continues to do so. Once, DS and I stepped into a "bunch" of coppperheads--a mother and 15 or 20 babies.....in the middle of the pasture. We fled from them....they fled from us, and somehow, we weren't bitten. (We were scared almost to death.) Those snakes are why we now mow 8' wide paths through all our pastures, and walk only on those paths!) Another time I was walking through my garden on a chilly fall morning and stepped right over a western diamondback rattlesnake that was coiled up in a path. I DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT! Luckily, DS was with me and said something like "Um, Mom, don't move because there's a rattlesnake right behind you." Of course, I moved.....immediately jumped forward a few feet and turned and stared at that snake, wondering all the while why it didn't strike me. DS went to the house, got a gun....and you know the rest. On yet another occasion, I was raking leaves and picking them up and putting them into a bag to carry them to my compost pile, and I suddenly realized a small pygmy rattlesnake was about 3" from my hand and was poised to strike......and, since I was crouched down low, I simultanouesly droppped the handful of leaves and the bag, and somersaulted backwards to get away. I didn't enter the woods for months after that. Those are a few examples....but there have been many snake encounters, and I honestly believe that it is only through God's grace that I haven't been bitten. For what it is worth, I don't hate all snakes, and I know that without them being here to eat all the field mice and meadow voles, we'd be overrun with rodents. We don't kill non-venomous snakes unless they are in our henhouse eating eggs, keats or chicks. I've even rescued non-venomous snakes which were being attacked by our cats, chickens, dogs or guineas. We have 14.5 acres and we pretty much leave the 10 or 11 wooded acres to the snakes during snake season. Then, in the winter months, we clear pathways and remove brush and enjoy walking through the woods (with dogs and cats tagging along behind us), but we don't kill snakes in the woods....we just avoid them during the 6 months of "snake season". In the couple of acres closest to the house, though, venomous snakes aren't tolerated. And, really, one of my biggest fears ISN'T that a venomous snakes will bite me, but rather that it will get away before we can kill it. If the venomous snakes are near the house, barn or garden, I want them dead. I'm really enjoying the cool weather too. During the cool spell a couple of weeks ago, we got down to 44 or 45 a couple of nights and I was deliriously happy in those early morning temps. I knew, though, it wasn't quite sweater weather, yet, and of course we haven't been that cool again, but it is in the 50s here this morning and that is nice. I know what you're saying about the nuts on the roof of the bunhouse! Our chicken coop and guinea coop are under a pecan tree and their roofs get showered with nuts too. Then the poultry begins squawking and carrying on because they think a predator is trying to come in through the roof. (A previous chicken coop had a fiberglass skylight to let in some light, and a large owl once crashed through that skylight in an effort to get himself some chicken, so their fear is not exactly unwarranted.) Fall is my favorite time of year except for the part about the snakes being up and about....and the knowledge that colder weather is coming. Once we've had several hard freezes and the snakes are denned up for the winter, I enjoy fall even more! I made it through a whole day Friday without running into a snake, so my nerves have calmed down a little. Well, actually, I saw the same snake Friday morning that I saw Thursday night, because we had to lift the bucket, retrieve it and get rid of it. It wasn't as scarey, though, because I KNEW it was there. To me, the most upsetting snake is the big, black, often 6-foot-long rat snakes that get in the chicken coop. I HATE even seeing them at all....even if we are a mile from the house and I see one crossing the road, it just makes me feel ill. I hope I've seen my last venomous snake of the year, but at the same time, I am sure I haven't. Dawn