I found what looks like a black rat snake in my yard. Does any one know if it is likely to hurt a rabbit that i have caged outside? The cage is about 3 ft. off the ground and up against the back of my house. Thanks.
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Well I googled "diet of rat snakes" and it said a full adult (maybe 6 feet long) can eat moles, squirrels, birds and mice. It can also climb trees. So if your rabbit is missing you will know where it is hiding.
I won't say that they "can't" hurt a rabbit, but I can offer personal reassurance that over 25 years of keeping rabbits, I have never had one killed (or even harmed) by a snake of any kind. And rat snakes as well as many other species are prolific in our area. They do eat our eggs and baby chicks/poults/ducklings/guinea keets.
I think that a grown or even half grown rabbit would not only be FAR too large for a rat snake, but would also put up quite a fuss if the snake even approached. With all that stomping going on, the snake would most likely go elsewhere.
I hope this reassures you.
I still wanna know if a rat snake will harm my baby rabbit because I have one and it just got bit and I'm mad
I saw a black snake kill and eat a good sized rabbit. Not a baby
I am not sure what a "Rat Snake" is, but we have Black Snakes here in Arkansas, and when we were raising rabbits for meat years ago, I was checking my nest boxes with babies in them one morning. These were built on the side of the cage, and had a lid on the top. They were just at eye level for me, and I opened one lid and peered in.
YES! Absolutely. I just had a rat snake kill 4 of my 8, 3 week old bunnies it ate one of them and was wrapped around another one when I snatched it out of the cage and relocated it. My bunnies are in wire cages 3 feet off the ground, then enclosed in a full caged area covered in hardware cloth. The bottom of this enclosure is covered with 2in x 4 in wire. This enclosure also has a door, however the 5 1/5- 6 foot rat/king snake made it into the enclosure and then into one cage through the feeder attachment area.
Yes a snake will kill your rabbits and kits. We just experienced this 2 days ago, the snake killed 2 kits. The mother rabbit isn't wanting to nurse her other babies, an both kits are now sick acting. We found another kit had died this morning.
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