4 Legged Predators On The Homestead

**Must-Stash** · 03-14-2009, 01:38 PM

A long time ago I lost half my laying hens to red fox. The hens were allowed to range feed during the day. The meanest rooster I've ever seen wasn't able to protect them. At that itme I was told that red fox were a protected specie so after sacrificing about 15 of them, I gave my surving hens to the farrior.

Fast forward to now. Have not seen a fox of any color for a very long time. But.......cayote have been a serious problem for about the last five years. I've gone from hearing the howling of the packs at night to actually seeing one just 20 or so yards from the house.

This is southern Michigan folks. Not the UP.

Does anyone else have to worry about the safety of small pets or farm animals from four legged predators on their properties?

**freebs** · 03-14-2009, 02:16 PM

yes we do, we put up fence and i bought me a bigger gun! now i shoot stuff that tries to get my animals! A coyote isnt endangered so shoot it!

**pinetree** · 03-14-2009, 02:38 PM

Yes, coyotes they got my cat, Trouble a couple years ago, thank goodness the vets saved him, tho he is missing a rear leg and has no hair where they had to graft skin.

My inside cats now go outside into a pen by use of a cat door to keep them safe.

I hear towns have hired sharp shooters to get rid of packs around the denver area. I can hear them around here but have never seen them that close.

**Laurie in Bradenton** · 03-14-2009, 04:02 PM

Have you considered getting a donkey or a few geese? Both are very protective and will give a preditor a run for their money. In the case of coyotes I'd opt for the donkey keep it in the same area as the chickens.
They also work well protecting calves.

Laurie in Bradenton

**fixer** · 03-15-2009, 12:05 AM

To protect their lambs, my next door neighbors had a llama for years. Until I saw him in action, I was skeptical about his guarding abilities. He was an incredible deterrent to all of the coyotes we have here. Before they got him, they lost half of there lambs. After, they lost none. We don,t have any outdoor cats and our dogs are large so we don't worry about the coyotes. We have lots of red foxes, also.

**Debbie-cat** · 03-15-2009, 12:08 AM

Yes, we do. Coyotes have been increasing in numbers and well as wolves. They are scary to see a pack running. Large barn owls have tried to get the cats once in a while as well. We have a rotweiller and two cats so far but want to get chickens this spring. We keep very close eyes on the pets.

**mzpepper** · 03-15-2009, 02:17 AM

Yes, I have seen coyotes and cougars on my property. The large dogs keep them away during the day. Everybody including me gets locked up at night.

Deb, they are talking about reintroducing wolves here. Are they a problem where you live?

**Sassyclass** · 03-18-2009, 11:02 PM

A friend of ours raises miniature horses and he keeps donkeys and alpacas in with them to keep the coyotes away. It works very well.

Cat

**Spirit Deer** · 03-19-2009, 08:55 AM

The only local predators I worry about are the cougars. There's not much you can do about an animal that climbs trees, so we just try not to think about them. Fortunately they're still rare in the area, although horses have been attacked not far from us.

Before we built our dog fence, I had a nice long chat with the local wolf ecologist from the International Wolf Center and got some great advice from her. She said a six-foot fence would keep wolves out, so that's what we put up. We live in a buffer zone between packs so seldom see a wolf near our place. One did show up last year and was watching our dogs from outside the fence, about twenty feet away. His body language didn't indicate any aggressiveness and we haven't seen him since. But wolves can and do take pets who are tied out, even some tied to the house they live in.

Our cats are house cats, except for one of them who refuses to cooperate with that idea and ignored his radio collar to the point we finally gave up on him. He never leaves the dog yard though, so he's safe from foxes, coyotes, wolves, etc. He's also usually inside a huge rock pile hunting little critters, so we feel he's reasonably safe from flying predators as well.

Our cats have a cat door leading into a screened porch, and that seems to keep them content enough that most of them don't even try to get out the dog doors. The one that would go out still respects his radio collar, so we're able to keep him in most of the time, although he will escape if given the chance. He's odd though because he'll go out the back of the house, jump the dog yard fence, then circle around to the front deck and start howling to be let in. He has never done anything else and never wanders away from the house at all. What a goof!

Mostly, we try to be mindful of where we live and who lives in our area, and take precautions to protect our pets since it's impractical to try to kill all the predators we share the forest with, particularly when some of them, such as wolves and eagles, are federally protected. Besides, it's their home too and it was their home first.

**Pemberleyan** · 03-21-2009, 04:52 PM

I don't have chickens, but I want some, and we know we'd have to build quite a "fort" for them. We'd have to bury wire (1/2" hardware cloth) and use it instead of chicken wire to keep coyotes, foxes and snakes out.

We have hawks, eagles, coyotes, foxes and poisonous snakes. When I was a child, no one had ever heard of a coyote in this southeastern state.

**Must-Stash** · 03-24-2009, 12:03 AM

I'm reading about the cougars. That reminded me, as of two years ago the DNR had filmed documentation of them in our area as well. That's the first I had heard of them being sighted in 30 years. There was also talk of brown bear sightings here in lower Michigan. What's going on?

**Spirit Deer** · 03-24-2009, 07:09 AM

More people are moving into wildlife areas, making it more likely the animals will be sighted and also disturbing them so they move around more. They also become more used to people and less afraid of us the more human/animal contact they have, which isn't always a good thing.

We live in black bear country and don't worry about it too much. There's a lot of misinformation floating around about bears. For good info, check out www.bear.org .

**freebs** · 03-24-2009, 07:30 AM

Ok i was still having problems so this is what we had to do, my chickens are in a 6 foot tall fence so i knew that dogs, fox things like that werent a problem but i thought more hawks things like that, well i was shocked it was a cat! I have chicken wire buried so nothing can dig then i did a 12x12 grid across the top of my pen with plastic baling twine, this makes it harder for birds to fly in and get anything, Then we run an electric fence at the top of the pen and bottom of the pen to shock anything that tried to climb the fence, well it seems to have worked i havent seen any cats lately and still have all my chickens!