Coyote question
 

When the coyotes are doing that loud yipping, yapping, squealing noise does that mean they just killed something?

no. this is a means for talking to each other and some times just for the joy of being alive.

When they just killed something, they get really quiet, cause they're too busy eating to talk. :)

I heard them "enjoying being alive" at about 3am. One of my indoor cats snuck out last night and was no where to be found this morning. In the past when he has gotten out he is always here in the morning wanting to come back in. So I thought for sure he got eaten by them. Well, he just showed up :)

Yes, my experience has been that they do that when they get a rabbit.

No. They are just talking to each other and responding to other packs at a distance. They may also be responding to other sounds that you may not hear, like a train, fire truck, ambulance or dogs howling way off in the distance.

When they're hunting and killing they remain silent.

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They don't share, so no, that would just advertise where they are and they have food

I love that sound. I spent last New Years Eve at midnight listening to that sound on my back porch. I'd gone out for more beers from my shop fridge, but when I heard they were singing, I set the beers on the porch and had me a serenade! Best New Year ring-in ever.

Lots of yipping going on here too because they have new litters of pups. Its driving the farm dogs nuts at night.

They hunt in packs. To catch a rabbit they need several of them to surround him, otherwise the rabbit could outrun the coyote. Once the rabbit is cut off and taken down, there's a lot of whooping & hollering. It's even a noisy chase.

Many times it's the pups greeting the adults coming to the den after their nightly hunt and the adults responding.

i sure wish they would sing for their supper! be nice to get an invite to feed them !

Actually, the squealing is the noise a rabbit makes when it's getting killed.

Oh man Al there are so many jokes I could make off of that one!!

Coyotes are very intelligent animals and actually hunt in packs, and alone. It depends on what they are going after. They have done a lot of studies on coyote behavior at the USDA Sheep Research Center in Idaho because of the impact they have on the sheep industry.

They found that as the number of LGD's changed, so did the tactics of the coyotes. Most of the time they hunted alone, BUT if they needed to buddy-up with one luring the LGD away from the sheep, they would and would later share the spoils of the other coyotes kill.

I know for a fact that they do call out to one another and share a dead animal because I can hear them at my house. Being a sheep farmer, I always have a dead lamb, sheep or other animal kicking around and so have a spot designated on my farm by the USDA for burial. They coyotes know where my "bait pile" is and you can hear them when they discover something new in it. As others have said, it is between 2-4 AM.

One interesting thing to note: all methods of deterring coyotes have been defeated by the wiley coyote (they are NOT nearly as dumb as you see on Road Runner Cartoons), however, no sheep wearing a livestock bell has ever been killed there. I would go insane if all my sheep wore bells (as well as broke), but maybe it might help someone else on here who has less sheep then I do and can outfit them all with bells.

Have you ever crawled into a den? I have not but saw some cowboys do it. Came out with several pups. Killed the female as it was killing and maiming the livestock. Pups did not live in captivity.

Once. Interestingly enough I was working as a cowboy at the time. I made a pole snare and wanted to try to catch one. In retrospect it's prolly a good thing no one was home.....................

Iowa coyotes must be diff. then coyotes in Nevada and Main :shrug:

Reached into a den once. My whole arm came out covered with fleas, didn't do that again.
It's been my experience that coyotes hunt more alone or with a mate, than in packs. The ki yodeling is usually more a social thing. Like your dog barking at the neighbors dog. And a single can catch a rabbit, seen it happen, course maybe Kansas rabbits are slower.

Something interesting to point out- the Eastern Coyote can and will hunt in a pack. They are descendants of western coyotes and the wolves that resided in the eastern US. If I recall correctly all the coyotes in the northeast US and eastern Canada are Eastern coyotes. They also have other "wolfy" traits like being larger with a stouter head and having slightly different coloring that reminds me of wolfishness.

I've no love for 'em, though one did wink at me one time. But I do like their pretty singing.

MEH !
The " singing " sounds to me like some lap dog getting his backside handed to him by a barn cat .

Coyotes
 

well , most times , when you hear them , they just calling to eachother .

they calling to gather the Family together before they go hunting , most likely .

on a Full Moon night , sometimes they'll just sit and howl & yip-yap at the moon .

when they're hunting to fill an empty belly , they make no sound at all , except a short bark , to let the pack know where they are , and to close the pack up to take down whatever game is there .

could be a deer or a calf or a dog or a house cat . .

Coyotes love to eat house cats , easy pickings I guess . .

I think they are different here. I talked with my Brother in Law who shot a coyote in Alaska and it was something like 60 pounds and was the second biggest ever shot in the state. I was shocked because ours are far bigger here and that was when he told me, new England coyotes are the biggest in the United States. I knew of one from Vermont that weighed 104 pounds...now that is a big coyote!

2 years ago the boys that hunt here got 71 coyotes; 31 from trapping and 40 from hunting with dogs. Last year though they only got 35 by hunting with dogs alone.

We used to be able to hook them, but that is no longer allowed as the animal rights people thought it was a harsh way to die. Apparently they have never seen what a deer or sheep endures when it is killed by a coyote.

One morning we got done milking cows and looked up in the upper pasture and saw one of our dry cows circling. Being dairy farmers we got scared because circling cows means listeroisis and surely death from bad feed. But upon bringing out the binoculars and looking up the hill, a distance of about half a mile, we saw what was going on.

A cows had a calf that morning, and a coyote was trying to get the calf. The calf's mother, a Holstein which coyotes will not take on, had put herself between her calf and the coyote, and a sort of circling, waiting game began. Luckily because the coyote was so engrossed in getting the calf, that he did not see the hired man sneak up on it with a rifle and it was shot. He was a big coyote too, probably in the 85 pound range.

Another time a hired man was out cleaning up the barnyard at 4 AM, and saw a coyote in the fog. He came in, grabbed the rifle and was able to shoot it. After the sun came up and the fog lifted, we saw that the coyote was within 100 feet of the barn.

Surprisingly we have only had a few calf's killed by coyotes, and no sheep. But we know our enemy too and try to keep the numbers down by aggressively hunting them.

there have been cases here of coyotes waiting till the cow goes down too calve and then chewing the cow up bad, really a mess. our coyotes seem to be cross bred with dogs, 80 pounds and not very afraid of man! had a farmer wondering where the coyotes were coming from as he had mowed down all the bush around and then planted corn, i did mention that the corn was as good a cover as the woods had been, maybe better as there was more low growing plants and it was in rows.

I think all that yipping means they killed something and it probably was my neighbor's cats. Then, they start that nasty yipping and howling to brag their sorry mean sneaky heads off about it. Coyote are horrible and I wish there was someone who could come shoot a whole bunch of them here. We are not good enough shots or I would be shooting them myself.

We probably catch more coyotes on our game camera than any other animal. They have a well worn path they travel along the outer perimeter fence line. At first, we thought it was a deer trail and put the game camera out to get a shot of them. But what we ended up getting was coyotes, coyotes, and more coyotes. I guess the deer steer clear of that area. We have 3 great pyrenees with our sheep and have yet to lose a lamb to a coyote kill. During lambing season, when we're out in the lambing barn at night, we can hear the coyotes yipping and laughing just outside the perimeter fence. The pyrs go crazy! It also makes the ewes in the lambing jugs edgy and nervous.
Actually, I don't know which drives the Pyrenees more crazy, the coyotes, or the black buzzards. They hate them both.

I understand the coyote dread, but they are an important part of the ecosystem. Without them, mice and rats would be playing under your feet as you type on the computer!

I used to live about a mile from some people who could not keep an outside cat because of the coyotes. We were over run with outside cats. Don't know why the coyotes would come up on their front porch to get a cat and would not bother one at our house.

I've gotten to know some of our local coyote clan pretty well in the last couple months
with my new infrared game camera. They go off about every night very nearby.
We had some extra corn this year that was wormy so started husking it and throwing some out near the camera.
Every night one would show up, never got two together in the same pic or video . Very smart and weary , would grab an ear of corn and take off with it , eat it somewhere else.
Heres a quick vid of one at night.

Mother Nature can be pretty harsh. Bluejay and a robin's nest...

I may call the peta people on Woodsy- Feeding that wormy corn. Mean to the poor worms.

I see only single coyotes in the day, packs at night. The packs stay farther away. The single ones sure look like they're in business.

In my neighborhood coyotes are shot on sight.

That "serenade" nearly gives me heart failure every time I hear it. I am terrified for my sheep and while I understand that they are supposed to play a valuable role in the ecosystem, I don't think the wanton slaughter of lambs and sheep or goats is traditionally understood to be part of their natural job description. What gets me especially is the fact that they are fundmentally lazy, and will go for the easy kill (i.e. a defenseless lamb) when the woods are overflowing with available prey. I suppose all animals do that, but when it's at domestic livestock's expense...

Fortunately, we have excellent fencing and a good LGD, and the sheep are kept close to the house, but I still sleep with one eye and both ears open. If I hear coyotes or the dog barking, or any commotion in the pasture, I'm outside in a flash. I can only hope that we won't suffer the loss of any animals and if I ever get the chance to shoot at a coyote, I'd actually hit it.

I can see the sheep and the dog go on edge during these yapping periods. I can calm the sheep down if I stay out there with them, but nothing will satisfy the dog until they are as far away as possible. For an Olde English Sheepdog, he has phenomenal sheep protection instincts.

The bells are useful for protection and at least you can hear when they are being chased. I encourage my sheep to stay around the barn at night, and not roam all over the pasture until daytime.

I didnt think they did packs?

I raised Finnsheep for a long time and NEVER had a sheep killed till the local idiot shot the pair that lived near hear then I had to go thru several more till I finnly got another pair here that didnt care for sheep.
The way I understand it is cyotes tend to learn to hunt something and then stick with it. Since the first pair here didnt hunt sheep they sorta protected the area from those that did.

Ive watched Cyotes hunt rabits just fine by them selves no pack needed.

The coyotes here hunt in packs, but they are very loose packs, not like a wolf pack. So you can see a coyote hunting and think he is by himself, but in reality he has the rest of his family hunting with him. They spread a wide net.

Their best service in this area is to clear the area of all the unfortunate dogs and cats dumped in the country. Too bad they don't eat the people who dump their pets instead of the abandoned pets. They also keep annoying neighborhood cats from damaging property. New neighbors learn pretty quick that if they want a cat, they had better keep it in.

I fence my poultry and dogs in so the coyotes can't get them. So the coyotes aren't a problem for me. The coyotes keep the cottontail population down to a dull roar. There would be a plague of rabbits without the coyotes.

We hear the coyotes howling many nights. The first time I heard them scream I woke my husband up because it sounded like a woman screaming as she was being killed! It was un-nerving and drove our farm dog crazy!

I have heard the coyotes here have mixed with wolves and migrated into Nova Scotia. They are bigger and more aggressive than the coyotes that used to be around here. Last week in another part of the province a 16 year old girl walking on old rail way tracks to school was attacked from the back and knocked to the ground. Lucky for her a man in a car saw it happen and leaned on the car horn. The scared animal ran into the woods and the girl only had scratches from the coyote on her face. However she is terrified to leave the house now. Dept. of Natural Resources has hired a trapper to hunt the coyote and kill it. There has been a bounty on coyotes since three killed a woman jogger in Cape Breton. They have always killed sheep and goats but going after people is a newer thing.

Which is why I hate that sound! My dogs freak out...even the ones in the house which can be pretty annoying when I'm in bed sound asleep!

Read Don Coyote by Dayton Hyde. An interesting book about coyotes and their ways.