westcliffe01
Veteran Member
I know someone in SE Michigan doing what you propose. It is a breed that sheds fur naturally so does not need to be shorn and they are sold for meat. They typically have a core herd of about 100 does and 1 ram and will have around 100 lambs a year. This year lambing was in mid winter and went on for a month and a half. Staying up all night checking on newborn lambs in mid winter is pretty hard on anyone. Then they need to be dewormed, all the males castrated and tagged.
If the coyote population is not going to decimate your herd you are going to need specialised no-climb fences that are partially buried. In the summer when the coyote pups get training in killing herbivores, they will come through and maul 5 or 6 sheep in a day. More will die from heat exhaustion from being chased in 95 degree heat and some will simply get run over by the herd in the stampede. It takes 3-4 days to know the full casualties of an incident. The particular farm I am referring to had a coyote problem that got worse and worse until in the year I got involved they had just about all their lambs and part of the breed herd wiped out. So they were going bankrupt or at least having their capital wiped out. (the owners had regular jobs too, like a lot of other farming people).
I put a lot of time into wiping out the boldest alpha coyotes, and that changed the behavior of the 6 different coyote packs considerably. The coyotes we have here are pretty big and generally, very much tuned into hunting, so dont react at all like the western coyote to rabbit in distress calls. Usually they run away if one uses any kind of predator call. The only exception to that is using actual coyote barks and howls at night, that is when they feel much safer. I have a G3 night vision scope and the state just allowed limited centerfire rifle hunting of predators at night (used to always be limited to rimfire only) so night hunting is often a more successful way to hunt these critters. In the intervening several years, thermal scopes have come down in price enough to be competitive with G3 NV scopes and thermal sights are much safer to use at night because of the reduced risk in not seeing livestock, farm dogs or people behind your target. Thermal essentially defeats just about all forms of camouflage, whereas with any NV setup if the target does not stand out from the background you still cant see it.
Regardless, one is still looking at an investment of about $4000 to be safely and effectively night hunting. You can pretty much forget about using lights. The rifles I have are 0.25-0.5 MOA capable, so not run of the mill factory stuff and shots tend to run from 125 yards to 420 yards with a median of about 250 yards. If I can, I will use my 243 with 90gr Berger VLDs which have excellent ballistics, and no coyote I have shot with it has taken a step. The alternative I have is a 223 with a 1:8 barrel shooting 80gr Berger VLDs. They are deflected a lot less by wind and have a lot more downrange energy than the light Vmax bullets that people typically use. But you do need to know your range pretty accurately with that setup. Competition shooters shoot out to 1000 yards with a similar setup.
I have recommended to the landowner concerned to consider selling the sheep off and converting the entire farm to hay production. If you use a round baler and have equipment to move the bales, you can cut down dramatically on bale handling and most likely you can sell a large portion of the harvest right from the field. I think there is more money in hay than sheep and a lot less work, once you have a good mower, tedder and baler. To do square bales in large numbers you need an accumulator and matching grapple for the tractor, anything else in this day and age is going to kill you with medical bills. That is why my vote is for the round baler. Close to 1000lb of hay in a 4x4 bale is hard to beat for compactness...
Best of luck with your decision.
If the coyote population is not going to decimate your herd you are going to need specialised no-climb fences that are partially buried. In the summer when the coyote pups get training in killing herbivores, they will come through and maul 5 or 6 sheep in a day. More will die from heat exhaustion from being chased in 95 degree heat and some will simply get run over by the herd in the stampede. It takes 3-4 days to know the full casualties of an incident. The particular farm I am referring to had a coyote problem that got worse and worse until in the year I got involved they had just about all their lambs and part of the breed herd wiped out. So they were going bankrupt or at least having their capital wiped out. (the owners had regular jobs too, like a lot of other farming people).
I put a lot of time into wiping out the boldest alpha coyotes, and that changed the behavior of the 6 different coyote packs considerably. The coyotes we have here are pretty big and generally, very much tuned into hunting, so dont react at all like the western coyote to rabbit in distress calls. Usually they run away if one uses any kind of predator call. The only exception to that is using actual coyote barks and howls at night, that is when they feel much safer. I have a G3 night vision scope and the state just allowed limited centerfire rifle hunting of predators at night (used to always be limited to rimfire only) so night hunting is often a more successful way to hunt these critters. In the intervening several years, thermal scopes have come down in price enough to be competitive with G3 NV scopes and thermal sights are much safer to use at night because of the reduced risk in not seeing livestock, farm dogs or people behind your target. Thermal essentially defeats just about all forms of camouflage, whereas with any NV setup if the target does not stand out from the background you still cant see it.
Regardless, one is still looking at an investment of about $4000 to be safely and effectively night hunting. You can pretty much forget about using lights. The rifles I have are 0.25-0.5 MOA capable, so not run of the mill factory stuff and shots tend to run from 125 yards to 420 yards with a median of about 250 yards. If I can, I will use my 243 with 90gr Berger VLDs which have excellent ballistics, and no coyote I have shot with it has taken a step. The alternative I have is a 223 with a 1:8 barrel shooting 80gr Berger VLDs. They are deflected a lot less by wind and have a lot more downrange energy than the light Vmax bullets that people typically use. But you do need to know your range pretty accurately with that setup. Competition shooters shoot out to 1000 yards with a similar setup.
I have recommended to the landowner concerned to consider selling the sheep off and converting the entire farm to hay production. If you use a round baler and have equipment to move the bales, you can cut down dramatically on bale handling and most likely you can sell a large portion of the harvest right from the field. I think there is more money in hay than sheep and a lot less work, once you have a good mower, tedder and baler. To do square bales in large numbers you need an accumulator and matching grapple for the tractor, anything else in this day and age is going to kill you with medical bills. That is why my vote is for the round baler. Close to 1000lb of hay in a 4x4 bale is hard to beat for compactness...
Best of luck with your decision.
