We've had chickens for the last 4 years. There have been ups and downs but this year we are really getting the hang of things. The girls have been producing well with the relatively mild summer we have had this year. However a few months ago our egg production started to drop from the usual 1-12 a day to 2-4 per day. What in the world could be wrong? 
It didn't take long to figure out what was up. But we left it alone thinking that it would eventually find another place to dine.
![36199746_10212469549627878_83805867190779904_n.jpg]
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a few days later I opened the coop to let the girls out to find one dead with this guy coiled around it. He was dispatched promptly.
The next day this one had killed another chicken :(
A few days later yet another snake in our coop! even after "Snake Away" spread everywhere... I know what you are thinking, surely you got them all. Well a week later we got what we think is the last one. Note the bulge in his belly, it's a ceramic egg.
Were they all black snakes? When I was a child we killed a black snake with 3 eggs inside. It was over 8 feet long. After that I was nervous about collecting eggs at night.
Yes that's what I was told they are. Black rat snakes.
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