Apparently there's a lot we don't know about farm life. Our little banty broody hen was setting on a nest of eight eggs that grew to 16 eggs as either she or another hen added to the nest daily. We tried to remove the fresh eggs for awhile, but the last we checked there was still 16 small eggs. Then one day I urged her off her nest to see if any were cracking, and there were only 8 eggs! We couldn't imagine who took them, and wrote it off as a mystery.
At last the eggs began to hatch. There were four black darlings that looked like a little string of pearls as they copied mama hen's example of scratching and pecking, all the while staying close to her. "I have bad news," my husband said after he had come in from feeding them one day. "There is only one chick left. One fell in the water pan and drowned, two were missing, one got out and I barely rescued it from the cat!" Oh, no! That cat must have gotten the other two! We moved the hen and lone chick into a cage where they would be safe.
Today I could see only the crotchety hen on the nest surrounded by hay, but I assumed the chick was in there with her. Next we went to the cage where Howard had placed several young bantums with 2 hens and a rooster. They were all black or dark colored except one white one. Howard spied blood on a raw spot on her back. Apparently, the rooster didn't accept a white chicken and had been pecking her. We moved it to a pen of white chickens, with a few Rhode Island Reds mixed in, all just a little bigger than her. We were dismayed to see a dead young chicken in the pen, looking as if it had been mauled. Something must have gotten in and grabbed it. The cat! I guessed.
At last I was ready to gather eggs from the hen house while Howard got their feed for them. I opened the lid to the nesting boxes and recoiled with a scream. A horrible sight met my eyes as a huge, black snake was entwined among the eggs! I shuddered and ran to the car. My brave husband got a garden shovel and slammed it into the snake. Although injured, the snake managed to slither off.
I told all this to the man at church tonight who had given us the bantums. He said the snake had probably taken the eggs we had been missing from the setting hen's nest. "They swallow them whole, then twist around a stick or something to crack them," he informed me. Then he said they eat baby chicks, too! That's probably what happened to the missing babies! The experienced chicken raiser said snakes slip under the hen and get the eggs. I wonder if that's why I didn't see the lone chick today!
"Did you see the picture in the newspaper of a black snake wound around the pole to a Martin bird house?" the knowledgeable informant asked. "It was trying to get to the bird's eggs!" I couldn't help but think of that old serpent, the devil, who the Bible says goes around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour! Thank God, someday the lion will lie down with the lamb, snakes will be harmless, and Satan will be thrown into a bottomless pit! I can't wait for redeemed creation!
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