Do Coyotes Jump Fences?

[Egghead_Jr]

A couple of weeks ago we lost a female goat to a coyote. We have a 4' fence surrounding our property and there is a strand of barbed wire roughly 3" of the ground. There was a dig under at a low spot and that is where the coyote got in. That area has be closed off.

This morning we lost one of our Tom turkeys to a predator. He weighed roughly 20 lbs. We checked the fence line and there is no sign of anything digging under. The turkey was killed in one spot close to the barn and then there were feather drops where evidently there was a struggle every 50' or so.

I question if this was a coyote or perhaps a bobcat? The head, one breast, and internals were eaten.

Any advice would be appreciated.

By the way - prior to the fence we kept the local predators well fed on chicken and turkeys. No issues since fall of 2015 until the last couple of weeks.

James Hardeman

You may have a continuous problem even if you now install a few electric wires. The problem with adding electric after an attack is the coyote know the fence and no longer investigate looking for a way in. They've been trained that the easiest way is to jump it. A funny and frustrating story I read was a person saying how useless electric netting was. He had problems with coyote getting over fence and taking birds so went ahead taking the plunge to electric. Said he watched the coyote as it emerged from the woods at a full run. Came across the field, jumped fence, picked up a bird killing it without slowing down and jumped the other side to finish trotting back to the woods with the chicken in it's mouth. How electric works is it teaches an animal to stay away. It's a fast lesson learned when they come investigating the first time. Animals are curious and literally nose around it and get zapped. We've a pack around us and use 4 ft poultry netting with no issues. Once the birds are out of grow out pen (small covered 2x4 welded wire pen) they are in a portable electric poultry netting run. It's the only fence that was ever used here and the wildlife is trained to avoid it. The birds are also trained in first day to avoid it so don't even think of flying over.