Coyote just took a chicken 10 feet from our house in mid afternnon

[tnchickenut]

jj is probrably right....

You'll have to keep them up for awhile. Your yard is a buffet right now... you have to shut the buffet down and get them to move on to the next resturant.

I, personally, live within sight of a coyote den and I can and do hear them nightly. I have never lost a chicken or anything to a coyote yet... I lock up everyone every night. All they are going to do is sleep anyways, so why not make a rutine of putting them behind well built locked doors for the night?

I'm sorry for your losses, but what do you expect wild animals to do? Its like "don't feed the bears" - you have given them a easy food source... they will be back and the will show their young.

That said, I do not condone killing everything that could kill your chickens or steal eggs. They were wehre first. You brought the chickens in. I'm not being negative (as I know this could be taken when you are reading it) - I'm simply asking you to think about the eco-system and balance in nature when you make your choice about how to deal with this problem.

 

[kgw]

I am not above wiping out nuisance animals. But I agree, plan on wiping every thing out. And now that you upset the balance of nature, be prepared for the animals that don't eat your chickens to mass produce and wreak other havoc. We have a couple of Owls that keep down our Rabbit/Squirrel population. Sure, I could kill the Owls and THERE GOES MY GARDEN!
I Fence in my Chickens.
Now being poor and starting with Babies, I have built my coups small, but expandable. They went from a live Squirrel trap, to a Rabbit cage, to a 4' X 4' pen and now 10' by 10'. I even have a 20 foot runner I can move about the yard for bugs.

 

[aprophet]

Quote:
Personally I have morning glories growing in/on my fig bushes kina gives the bunnies hidey holes to tuck into that and I do not really weed my flower beds until the momma bunnies have finished rearing their young. The owls get one now and then but not near as many as they used to hawks have a hard time navigating all the tall trees I have in the yard. a lot of the reason we have so many fox in town here is the yotes have decimated the prey out in the sticks . The predators that I trap I have been trapping since 1969 I do NOT wipe them out merely control the local population. so as to give the local song birds rabbits muskrats a half a chance it has been working here for quiet a long time

 

[speakup4kids]

As far as I'm concerned this has very little to do with the pros and cons of free ranging chickens and dwelling on that really skips over the important issue here which is safety. In my experience, which to be perfectly honest I have much more of in regards to coyotes than chickens, once coyotes have become accustomed to humans and are no longer scared of them, there is a significant risk when they are allowed to remain. Coyotes are part of the wildlife chain and will generally not cause damage to humans until they have become partly domesticated. I am not talking domestication in the sense that we tend to think of it, like dogs or cats, but domestication in the way that was demonstrated by the original poster. Coyotes do not by nature come that close to houses and when you have a band, or family of pups that will, they have to be removed for the safety of not only the animals but the humans in the area. For that coyote to have come within 10 feet of your house to take the chicken shows absolutely no natural fear remaining in the animal. People have probably somewhere along the way thought it would be cute to throw food to it, etc... which should never happen with these animals. Your child is not safe around this animal and having seen the unpredictable nature of coyotes first hand I would see to its removal immediately. After all, you can not stick your family in a pen... someone is going to have to be able to free range in that yard of yours and it is not o.k. to protect the wildlife at the expense of your family's freedom.

Heidi....

 

[Wolfwoman]

Quote:
Yikes! And make her terrified of all dogs?? That's not too good an idea, kids that age can already have large dog issues and this would make it worse!!

If you have a nuisance yote, then take it out by gun or trap. Find out the laws, see if there's someone around that does this sort of thing if you don't want to. The previous post is correct, this critter has learned that humans won't hurt it, you need to teach it differently.

 

[pookieslw]

Quote:
Heidi - exactly my point - this is a dangerous coyote because it is not afraid.......Do people condone squirrels and bats in the attic as wildlife? If the original poster had lost her chicken out of the chicken house at night, I would be less concerned - yes, first step would be to beef up physical security.....

 

[pookieslw]

Quote:
Wolfwoman -

I wasn't saying give the kid a panic attack, just that now is a good time for a rule reminder.....

I have always taught my children to be careful around dogs. If you want to pet a dog on a leash, you must first ask the person on the other end of the leash. All dogs off leash should only be approached under the supervision of Mom or Dad. Wildlife is not to be approached and a three year old is not necessarily going to be able to distinguish between dog and coyote. This is not going to make a kid afraid of dogs. These are just the simple rules of conduct like please and thank you.

I have a well trained puppy. I do not want random kids running up to her suddenly and bopping her on the head and spooking her. I put up with it, and she's a good dog, but if she ever gets spooked by an ill mannered child so that she's then afraid of kids I will be highly annoyed.

 

[Wolfwoman]

That makes more sense, but that's not what it sounded like earlier

My boys grew up around dogs and also learned the same thing you teach your kids, and I don't allow very small children around my dogs, period. I don't trust kids, my dogs I trust, but they are LARGE dogs and if one moved the wrong way and knocked em down, guess who's to blame?

 

[Dogfish]

Build a secure coop and run.

 

[loopy12]

Oh. Opened up several cans o' worms there it seems.

DH and I were debating this evening...'if I was a chicken, would I rather have a short but blissful life free ranging, or a long life cooped up?'. Jury is still out on that one...
We do have a coop - it is currently full of 9 week old chicks. We also have a fenced vegetable garden and an old dog run that we sometimes use as a chicken run. The chickens will be moving to one of these last two for the next few weeks. They will keep the coyotes out but not the raccoons. And when Isaid they free range I did mean only in daylight hours. At night we have a shed, an eglu and a traditional wooden hen house.

As for the eco system discussion...I fully respect that - I accept that I saw a deer in my orchard this morning nibbling my apple trees, and I plant extra vegetables and fruit etc to allow some for us some for the birds etc. I seed wild flowers to encourage butterflies and bees. I'm ok with the snakes sunbathing on my patio. I even worked for some time as part of a team creating a conservation area for Jaguar in central america. I'm not some trigger happy hunter. I generally have a live and let live attitude even withe the mice I know are living in my basement. Unfortunately I don't consider the large number of raccoons here to be part of this balanced eco system because I believe we created the problem. We lived here with free ranging chickens quite happily for about 9 months before we lost a single bird. In retrospect I fear that it was our keeping chicken and pig feed in bins (with lids, but apparently not raccoon proof ones) and not putting away the chicken/pig feed bowls every night that led to a raccoon population explosion. We had never lived here before. No-one told us it might be an issue. I remember DH complaining how much food the ducklings were eating last year...hmmm...think they may have been sharing...
From what I can tell we have an unnaturally high number of these masked predators on our 8 acres. We are trying to restore the balance.

And again, yes, I accept if I leave the hen house door open after dark then all bets are off - and we don't. We shut the animals up tight at the lighter end of dusk. It was the daylight predation that scared me and the proximity to my door. I know those coyotes are out there, I hear their blood curdling whines and howls and yapping...again its the DAYLIGHT PREDATION that scares me. And yeah, my DD will not be playing outside in the sandbox outside the kitchen window for the foreseeablle future.

I reserve the right to feel safe in my own home.