COYOTES

[2manyrocks]

How much is the vet bill going to be for cattle injured when they get frightened by the helicopter?

 

[Eagle1]

Thinning the pack is a very temporary solution. I see many farmers around here have donkeys to guard the livestock. For us, it will be large dogs. Once the property is fenced I will get another GSD. My wife wants another Doberman.

Coyotes take easy pickings. They learn quickly to avoid critters that fight back.

Might want bigger faster dogs. I've seen a Great Pyr take on 4 and survive but she was vicious, a neighbors GP took a lot of vet care after a bad night with yotes or feral dogs. Now my "mutts" are mostly a bit bigger and faster. If one of my males lets out a bellow they scatter, they know what comes next. These days I don't even see bobcats any more and have not had a lion track in years. My gang is mostly in 140 to 160 pound range and a couple can hit 40 mph bursts.
I've never lost a calf to coyotes, have a lost a couple due to weather. Lost a more chickens to raccoons and possums when the dogs are not free to guard.

 

[Topzide]

Here's one from Southern MD, a bit different from their western cousins!

 

[NoTrespassing]

Might want bigger faster dogs. I've seen a Great Pyr take on 4 and survive but she was vicious, a neighbors GP took a lot of vet care after a bad night with yotes or feral dogs. Now my "mutts" are mostly a bit bigger and faster. If one of my males lets out a bellow they scatter, they know what comes next. These days I don't even see bobcats any more and have not had a lion track in years. My gang is mostly in 140 to 160 pound range and a couple can hit 40 mph bursts.
I've never lost a calf to coyotes, have a lost a couple due to weather. Lost a more chickens to raccoons and possums when the dogs are not free to guard.

Our 2 dogs are only about 75 lbs. One GSD and one mutt but they keep the coyotes out of the "yard". I think the fact that the dogs are outside 100% of the time and unfenced makes a difference. The area we're in is pretty thick with coyotes, you can hear more than one pack sometimes. One neighbor will stake a deer carcass and take a couple out once a year.

 

[Jstpssng]

One winter I had coyotes running up and down my driveway, within a few feet of my house. I brought home a 6 week old puppy and they disappeared. I’ve always wondered if that was a coincidence…
Years ago I was laying out a stream buffer in a snowstorm, and sensed that something was around. I didn’t see or hear anything, but after a while I paced down to the stream to make sure I was 75 feet away. When I returned there were coyote tracks in my footprints. Presumably I was chasing rabbits out to them.

 

[ponytug]

@oosik sorry to hear it. We are definitely on the "live and let live" page here. I suspect that your neighbor is burning money. Like others above, we have never seen our local coyotes bother our cows. The coyotes walk around the herd. In speaking with the neighbors who do run thousands of cattle, they said that they had never seen depredation by coyotes or mountain lions.

Like @Jstpssng, the coyotes often parallel us while we walk around the property, but they are always on the other side of the fence. The moment we get close to a fence, they are on the move to cross out of the paddock. We still laugh about the time my wife was walking our GSD down the driveway, both being shadowed by a coyote on the other side of the fence. She told our dog to "sit" and both our dog and the coyote promptly sat.

All the best,

Peter

 

[LouNY]

Well, heck guess I'll go against the common vein here today.
Hope they get them thinned down for the money he's putting out.
I have seen them get a calf that got separated from it's mother.

 

[jaxs]

One winter I had coyotes running up and down my driveway, within a few feet of my house. I brought home a 6 week old puppy and they disappeared. I’ve always wondered if that was a coincidence…

Maybe so,maybe not. Coyotes were getting increasingly brave,coming into yards, lurking along fence lines during the day and stealing more chickens than usual. I ordered a tape with chicken distress calls then me and neighbors took turns setting the call machine out and killing coyotes coming to it. The action soon slacked up but coyotes could still be seen in tree lines. On two different occasions when call was turned on coyotes were seen fleeing across the fields. Apparently missed shots taught yotes that chicken squawks are followed by fireworks, ricocheting bullets and flying debris.

 

[deserteagle71]

Well, heck guess I'll go against the common vein here today.
Hope they get them thinned down for the money he's putting out.
I have seen them get a calf that got separated from it's mother.

Some years ago I came across a startling scene - cow was laying down, giving birth. A couple coyotes were tearing at the calf as it was being born. As I pulled up the 'yotes scattered but it was too late - the calf's face and neck were torn up. The cow finished pushing out the calf and seemed to be ok.

This past summer my neighbors lost one of their goats to a coyote pack. They heard the commotion from the other goats and went to investigate; the coyotes ran off but it was too late. Belly and stomach torn out of the goat.

I don't have livestock so I don't bother the coyotes when they come prowling around. Lots of ground squirrels on my place and the 'yotes keep them thinned out a bit. But I can't keep a cat around here. Every so often a feral cat moves into my barn but none of them has ever lasted more than a couple weeks.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

I used to spend a bunch of time outside on farms and ranches back in AZ when I was growing up. Later as an adult, not so much.

I know this will rile some folks up, but I guess I'm the odd man out.

I have personally watched packs of coyotes pull newborn calves out of their mothers while being born. I've watched them kill the calf, not eat it, and then start chewing on the back side of the mother cow while she was still laying down. Some of those cows had to be put down as the wounds were too severe to save them. I had to shoot a few cows myself for this reason. I've watched coyotes circling herds during calving, waiting for the opportune moment to swoop in and pull a calf. It was so bad for a while that guys would post up with rifles around the herds and shoot at any 'yote they saw. It would discourage them for a while, and then they would be back. We would shoot any coyote we got a set of sights on. Didn't matter what they were "up to". Get a bead on one, and BANG. No more coyote. Was it imagined? Nope. Happened frequently enough that come calving season, we'd ask around our circle of friends to see who was free to provide guard duty.

Would we get completely rid of them? No. Not ever.

But the idea was to deter them, and make the survivors want to hunt somewhere else. My personal reckoning was that it worked. We started losing far fewer calves and cows each season.

I guess it depends on where in the country you are? What other habitat there was? Dunno, frankly don't care. 'Yotes were a problem for a few years in a row, until they weren't. Chalk it up to aggressive 'yote management if you want, or not.

But there it is. Just my own personal historical sampling, from decades ago, before Disney started making musical cartoons like Lion King, and ranchers and farmers (at least in AZ) still knew what was what.