let's talk about chicken snakes, climbing wire.

[dufus]

someone said in another thread, that snakes can climb wire. i asked about hardware cloth wire,, but got no response. any of you herpitoligists out there know if a chicken snake can climb 36'' of hardware cloth??? i know they can easily climb 2x4s and pole, by wrapping around them, even steel poles. i have a 10' front section of my hen yard that is open for me to see in from the house, with 2 layers of chicken wire and the bottom 36'' covered with 1/2'' hardware cloth. can a snake climb up the 36'' of HW cloth and go through the chicken wire. these are ruining my summer, as i've had 6 so far this year, and lost one of my yard hatched biddies monday night. he did get in an egg box then and that's where his career ended. i'm not sure why he didn't get any more biddies, it might have been at night and he couldn't find them, he probably got the first on the perch and the rest scattered. anyway you turn it,, i'm gonna fix the coop where a spider can't get in. when i built the hen house last fall i put a lot of thought in it and got it extremely secure,,, but the snakes are proving hard to deal with. i originally called my hen house Fort Mc Cluck-Cluck,,,, but i'm not so cocky now,,,,,,,,----------- i also have an open side with 2 layers of chicken wire, with a 37'' tall steel roofing panel on the bottom. now i know [ or thought i did ] that a snake can't climb up that to the chicken wire,,, can it???? i live in mississippi and can not wrap it all in galvanized tin, as it is too hot. hardware cloth anything that isn't tin or steel???? i need some help here... thanks


Bypassing the censor with symbols is a no-no.

 

[7L Farm]

A snake can climb.

 

[dinahmoe]

you will have to have anything that chicks are in completely enclosed using 1/2 in hardware cloth.i have small pens this way for the mama and chicks and as they grow the snakes tend not to mess with them.they will still get into the adult pens but usually just get the eggs.
a snake can climb anything that has any kind of grip.depending on how high your tin comes up because the snake can lift a 1/3 of its body up off the ground so it really depends on the size of the snake.with the tin up that high though really reduces the air flow and i know where i am it is too hot to do something like that.

here is a pen i really like for mamas and chicks.if you have it on the ground and no wire on the bottom just make sure you have it on level ground or i use bricks placed all the way around.

snakes are the hardest to keep out.

these are not my photos just some neat ideas.the only thing i would use differently is scrap the chicken wire and use hardware cloth and have better and more locks on there because these are snake proof but not coon/dog proof.

 

[GableBabble]

We had a chicken snake in a 7ft tree one year. The tree had no low limbs, so I would say they can climb just about anything that they can get a grip on. I will ask a friend of mine who raises Boa's. I am just guessing that they would not be able to climb a flat metal surface. Hardware cloth is the way to go as far as fencing.

 

[lleighmay]

Any of the climbing-type snakes such as rat snakes can climb just about anything. There is a 6 ft black rat snake at my parents' who routinely climbs up the side of the house and looks in the second floor windows (almost 20 ft up). We've watched him do it- he gets up there by partially wedging himself between the edge of the vertical gutter and the siding on the house. All we can figure is that he thinks the bat house is a bird house and some of the bees' nests might be bird nests. There's nothing there for him to bother so I haven't relocated him to the barn. Snakes that climb (and not all species do) don't need to wrap around anything to do it- they can go right up the side of a tree with even slightly rough bark and wire can provide the same purchase. As previously mentioned a snake can lift about 1/3 of its body off the ground and get a grip halfway up your fence, and even with a smooth surface on the bottom portion it may be able to use vertical supports to help him get up the to the "easy" part. If you're having problems your best bet is to use wire with smaller holes so even if he does get up there he can't get in.