Snake Bites

[TxCoUnTrYbOy]

Where I am about to put my animals, there are a lot of snakes around the pond. Mainly water moccasins (poisonous). Is there often problems with them biting cattle? What happens if they do bite the cattle? How do you treat it? Is there any way to get rid of these things?

I know they can have a pretty bad temper, and will bite more than once. Knowing my bull, he will see one and try to play with it. After all, I have seen him chasing a rabbit, and even worse, a butterfly...

 

[Beefy]

i wouldnt worry about it. most of them are probably in fact brown water snakes.

 

[Farminlund]

i wouldnt worry about it. most of them are probably in fact brown water snakes.

As I read the post, I thought the same thing. We have many water snakes in our creek - no moccasons. The water snake will tend to move away when approached, supposedly the water moccason will stand its ground or even move toward the intruder (they are very territorial), thus they are considered by most to be aggressive & truely dangerous snakes.

 

[dun]

Bakc in the 60s along trhe mexican boarder, on cold mornings with warm days we lost a number of calves to snakebite. All of the bites were on the neck between the head and brisket. We lost a couple of calves a month tha way. I figured it was the snake crawling in for warmth and biting when the calf would shift around. Made sense to us anyway. The only venemous snakes in that area were rattlers of a couple of different types

dun

 

[Jogeephus]

I wish you had filmed the bull chasing a butterfly. That must have been hilarious. :lol: We have a lot of snakes on our place. Each spring I turn them into the flatwoods where there are plenty of whale wallers. In these areas we have cottonmouths, timber rattlers, diamondbacks, pigmy rattlers and coral snakes. About every other year one will come up with a bite. So far, we haven't lost any cattle though. I don't worry about it anymore.

 

[TheBullLady]

We've got some mocassins in the tanks, but in 14 years, I've never had a cow or calf get bitten. I suspect the snake will retreat if possible.