Do Chickens Eat Snakes?

A Snake for all Chickens!

by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

What an interesting new experience for both me and the chickens yesterday!

During some of his tractor work in our farm fields, Luis found a medium-sized garter snake lying dead nearby.  Although there was only a small trickle of blood near its mouth, Luis suspected that he probably unknowingly killed the young snake with the tractor and/or whatever farm implement he was pulling behind it. 

Not wanting the snake to have died in vain, I asked Luis whether I could feed it to the chickens.  He readily agreed, but also asked if I thought the chickens would be afraid of it.  I didn’t.  Chickens are omnivores, and I expected to watch a game of chicken tug-o-war.

I brought the snake over to the flock and tossed its lifeless body over the electric fence.  The chickens had, of course run over to me expecting a food handout, but they were totally unsure whether or not this thing I had tossed in was food or not. 

Several of them gathered around, staring at it.  You could just hear them saying, “What do you think it is?”  “I don’t know.  What do you think it is?” 

“Do you think we’re supposed to eat it?”  “I don’t know.  It doesn’t look edible to me!” 

“Try it.”  “No way!  You try it!”

After waiting and watching for a while, I decided that maybe showing them more of the snake’s blood and guts would help.  So, I took the snake out, cut it in half, and tossed half of it back in again.  I receive the same comical response.

Finally, one of the “less-chicken” chickens pecked at the limp half-snake-body.  By doing so she, of course, caused the snake’s body to wiggle, and all the watching chickens simultaneously jumped back in surprise.  I could barely contain my laughter.

After another moment, another chicken (or perhaps the same one) took another stab at it – and finally decided to pick it up the wiggly object and try it out.  Then the chase was on.

I’ve seen this happen many times before when one chicken has something to eat that everyone else wants to share.  The “lucky” chicken is chased around and around the chicken yard – until they either give up the treasured morsel, or it’s stolen away, or they manage to finally eat all or part of it.

In this case, the brave snake-eating chicken was able to elude her pursuers – and finally gulp down the entire half-snake-body.  It was kind of amazing to watch. 

But then I started to worry about that much snake inside one chicken’s crop.  So, I took the remaining half-snake-body, cut it into four smaller pieces, and tossed them into the chicken yard – and this time watched four different chickens enjoy their snake-treat without any hesitation!