Serious Question: Coyotes

I had heard that many coyotes now are wolf/coyote hybrids. We've been hearing them a lot lately. We aren't as worried because our barn is pretty dog/wolf/coyote proof. We get everyone in and do a head count every evening while its still pretty early (7ish)

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Solstice Sun Farm- Nubian goats, heritage poultry, soaps, and upcycled crafts

If you can't get a LDG, you need a gun. We have coyotes here and even with my 3 Anatolians, I see those suckers sometimes. Of course, if Emma sees them, she is over the fence in record time to go after them. Hubby shot a huge male last year in the very back wooded area of our property. Big and healthy so they are finding good food in our area. At least it hasn't been my goats.

Shoot and trap them. Check the game laws, but here you can use live traps, food hold, or snares. Snares are best set along fences where they are digging under. Live traps most likely won't work, and foot hold trap work, but you have to know what you're doing.

They DIG???? I guess so, they bear young in dens.

I will be taking the chow out for a walk later. As big of an animal lover as I am, my DH has my blessings to go for a walk with his night scope.

They wouldn't bother 3 full sized horses, though, correct? Last time I heard these beasties we didn't have the goats, that is why I am clueless now. It just didn't bug me that much; I know the barn down the end of the lane reported a shortage of barn cats, though.

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Becky

Northern coyotes have about 15% of Timber wolf in them, that is why they are bigger then regular coyotes. Wolves see them as competition and usually drive them off or kill them.

Becca do not assume they are strictly nocturnal, or singular. I have seen sets of them running along my property in the daytime, sometimes one but up to 4 traveling, even at 11 am on a sunny not cloudy day. They still travel through or by me even though I have LGD that bark and chase them off. Either they are seeing if they can grab a quickchicken/goat dinner or feel the need to travel along the canal.
I am not trying to scare you, just make sure you are careful. They can also climb/jump and get over fences as well. They like easy food and if they find out you have it they will keep coming back for it. I lost 5 ducks to them over a couple of weeks when I first moved here. I now have LGD.
Foggy days are the days that scare me because they get pretty bold, and came within 15 feet of my house to snatch up a rooster and took off into the fog. It saw me, I yelled at it but it grabbed him and ran. This was pre-LGD.


Again not trying to scare you, but give you info to protect your livestock. I deal with them all the time for 9 years now and have been up close and personal with them a few times. Once one was trapped between me and one of my escaped neighbor's horses and thankfully they are more scared of us then horses and it decided to ran near it was safer then running toward me.

They do fear us unless they have been fed or other stupid things humans do to wildlife. If they see or hear you the dirty little scavenagers will take off.

Hopefully it/they will move off but use electric if you can, without an LGD it is your best bet.

**Just read the barn cat thing and remembered they seem to see white very well in the dark all the ducks that got eaten were white, they had issues seeing the black Cayugas or the grey goose in the dark. I also lost a white barn cat, but not the black ones. Lost 2 Cali white chickens to them as well. So white is something I sold off or made sure was super secure at night until I got the LGD, who are white. Let them try and eat them

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Beware of urban coyotes, though, who are NOT afraid of humans. Try to scare them off and they are likely to pull a knife on you and take your wallet.

Other than that:

Crystal, our Texas coyotes are about 25% wolf. That is why we no longer have the Texas Red Wolf and the Texas River Wolf...the wolf populations were decimated by ranchers and the remaining wolves got absorbed into the coyote population. Abandoned dogs with the instincts/high prey drives to actually SURVIVE in the wild after they have been dumped (Over 95% of dogs dumped in the country die of starvation within a few weeks) get absorbed into the coyote populations.

Couple this with the fact that humans have killed off most of the coyotes natural predators: medium-large cats, wolves, etc., and you have a coyote population that gets ever more larger in physical size and in population.

Becky, taking your dogs for evening walks to give you some time to secure your barn sounds like a fine plan. And the electric folks are right: coyotes have sensitive noses and do NOT like getting those noses zapped with electric fence/netting!

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Peace,
Caliann

"First, Show me in the Bible where it says you can save someone's soul by annoying the hell out of them." -- Chuck

Heard 'em again tonight. My neighbor swears they don't howl, either! I you-tubed the sound I was hearing, and am pretty sure what I was hearing. They start first, then all the nieghborhood dogs start barking and carrying on.

Boys patrolling the "hood" (lol) on 4 wheelers claim no signs of them back here. Just a matter of time.

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Becky

I hear them sometimes near our back fence (we have almost 13 acres) so it's close. The property behind ours has cattle but no one living on the place, but recently they acquired a donkey after I mentioned to the owner that there are coyotes on their place. Most people around here have donkeys. We have 4 dogs that roam free (and 1 in a pen but he'll howl) and 3 donkeys (one stays with the goats and two stays with the horses and cattle). Coyotes would have to get past the two that's with the livestock before they could get into the seperate pasture with the goats and that fence is field fencing topped with electric wire. I've never lost any animal to coyotes. Once they start their yipping (think it's the young ones that yip) and howling then our dogs start their howling.

DO NOT SHOOT THE COYOTES! If you shoot them they know there is an empty spot inthe pack and they will quickly go about filling it with 2 more coyotes. It is fact, studies have been done on many coyotes and they ALWAYS refill the empty spot in the pack. @ things that do work well are that Coyotes are super smart and if they are attacking your chickens say and you want them to stop the BEST way is to give them a chicken that is laced with something to make them sick. Once a coyote gets sick from his meal he will always remember and avoid that food type permanently.
Coyotes will also avoid an area if they think it is unsafe.

If you don't believe me look on the web. We had a whole pack of coyotes on our back steps hunting my chickens one morning. There were 5 of them and they were practically tag teaming each other. They were literally 10 feet from me. I grabbed my med sized mutt dog and a pot and spoon and together we chased the hell out of them. I was banging and screaming at them and my dog tore after them. We have not seen hide nor hair of them since. And we haven't lost a chicken or duck since. I called fish and game for advise and they told me to set them up with tainted food if they ever came back. If you hear them take the dog out for a walk and bang some pans and scream at them. You want them to think your place is not a safe place to hunt.

I don't mean to dispute anyone but: in most cases where someone claimed to have shot or killed a large coyote they claim some kind of wolf/coyote inter breed. DNA has proved otherwise, according to most state and federal biologist. Typically coyotes are larger in the northern states and smaller in the southern and southwest. Coyotes have been trapped in Central Park in New York City, there are breeding populations in all the lower 48 and Alaska.
Living in rural South Dakota the coyote is a regular visitor, I have one that comes up to my house at night within 100 yards. I hunt and trap coyotes 6 months out of the year. So when this one shows up at night I open my door in the bedroom, grab a mouth blown howler and he and I swap insults to each other. Sometimes this goes on for 30 minutes and some times its over after a couple of howls.
Coyotes are amazing creatures they can adapt to their environment with every step of the paw.
I have no doubt when the last of man kind dies out there will be a coyote gnawing on his bones.

Kris,
I'm sorry to tell you this but lead poisoning is the best way to rid your coyote problem.
and you put yourself, your dog and your pots and pans in danger running and chasing after coyotes. Do a google search in coyote attaches and see the rise in coyotes attaching humans. One of the tricks a coyote uses is to get a dog to chase the coyotes off the porch or from the house and then gang up and have fido for supper.
You are right in one thing; the coyote population will expand to the size the land can sustain

Not wanting to thread drift but 195Pilot that is incorrect. While it is only about 15% there still is wolf genes in the Northern (or Northeastern) Coyotes which is why they are bigger. In general wolves drive off, kill and at times eat coyotes. So I know that most are not mixed.

I have also met a Coy-Dog, wild nutty thing that should never have become a pet. But I also do know that in general they do not mate with dogs but the coyotes tend to use a female in heat to get males dogs away from the house and kill them.

With wildlife you never can say never

http://www.projectcoyote.org/newsrel...s_eastern.html

http://www.esf.edu/pubprog/brochure/coyote/coyote.htm

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Yes, they dig. They're dogs after all right?

Makes sense. White stands out in the dark, regardless of what colors a person or animal sees.

Better put one on the bottom too to prevent digging.

My aunt had a husky/yote mix. That thing was mean as could be.

Great about the color thing...Sammy Sheep is white, ------ is white (go figure, right?), and Annie is white. Maybe I'll go down with some Clairol Hair Dye and dye them all black!

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Becky

This does help. And makes sense with the yipping we are hearing. What part of SD are you from? I'm SE between Sioux Falls and Sioux City

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Hunter's lie, true. But the Northeastern coyote is a different creature then the Western one. Where you are, state biologists have proven there's no wolf blood in the coyotes - anywhere there's a decent wolf population there's no wolf blood in coyotes.

But where Beccachow is, there's wolf-blood in the coyotes.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gn...n-new-england/
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1656/045.017.0203

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A ship in the harbor may be safe, but that's not what ships are built for

I wonder...is that why MY coyotes howl and others say they don't? Interesting thought.

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Becky

If the State of Kansas told you there's no mountain lions, they were flat out lying. They've introduced them up near Ogallah. Of course, they say they are managing them so they don't breed- yea right. Our neighbor has a farm up there and he's seen cubs. My husband saw a lion 2 miles southeast of La Crosse and some folks in Liebenthal lost a dog to a mountain lion, so they are here.

My father-in-law and husband were hunting up at our neighbor's farm and saw three wolves- most people I'd say they were seeing things, but on some things I don't question my FIL. It took me a long time to convince him to get a dog and I was glad when he did. She may not be big, but she keeps an eye out on things.

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Miranda
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Registered La Mancha and American Alpine

Becca the ones here howl and they have no wolf blood.
http://www.rps.psu.edu/probing/coyote.html


I like this paragraph from Penn State, the maniacal laughter is right:

It starts with a few falsetto yips, then blossoms into something resembling maniacal laughter, the yips stringing together into chattering howls. It's an attention-grabbing sound, and an eerie one: coyotes howling, usually in the evening or at night, a chorus that is being heard with increasing frequency throughout the Northeast—and not just in remote wilderness areas, but in towns, suburbs, and city fringes.


I learned the white thing the hard way. Now I have dark chickens, dark guineas and only black outdoor cats. I had considered dyeing white goat babies but the LGD are doing well and they are at the barn at night.

Unless they are use to humans, very sickly, or otherwise demented they do not really break into barns. Again with wildlife never say never, but they like to grab and run, they try not to get trapped inside. They do not eat where they kill, they take off with it and eat in a safe spot.
So if your barn is pretty secure the animals should be safer in the barn then outdoors. They usually go for smaller animals they can grab and run with not lots of senseless slaughter like ill behaved or feral dogs would do if they got into a barn. Coyotes are in it for food, fast and easy food is best.

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No, all coyotes howl. They call them Songdogs some places. But coyote howling is distinctive from wolf howling, even the eastern ones. It is high pitched with lots of yips. Here's a youtube video

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