Coyote or Coon or ?

[jmass]

Something killed one of my neighbors turkeys last night. What ever it was made it over a 4 foot horse fence (2"X4" pattern). He thinks it was a coyote. Can a coyote jump over a 4 foot fence? We have Alot of Coyotes around here but they have not messed with anything but watermelons until now. Could it have been a coon or owl. His turkeys roost under a open sided horse barn.

 

[speckledhen]

Yes, a coyote can jump and/or climb a 4 ft fence. They can dig under as well. Depends on how the turkey was killed to diagnose who the killer was, though. More details about the carcass would help narrow it down.

 

[jmass]

There was feathers in several place in the yard and the carcass was on the outside of the fence. The predator ate the breast and guts. the only thing left was the bones feathers and leg meat.

 

[rooster-red]

I'm suprised that the leg meat was left!

 

[hinkjc]

I don't think a coyote would leave meat behind. Sounds like a coon to me.

Jody

 

[TxChiknRanchers]

SOS

 

[Rafter 7 Paint Horses]

Coyotes normally won't leave anything behind. They take it with them & eat in a safe palce.
About them going over a 4 foot fence, that is nothing for a coyote, we have had them take 40 pound lambs over a 5 foot fence with no problem. We know they went over, wool was stuck on barbed wire that is run at the top of our field fence, and tracks showed where they went over.

When the coyotes nearly wiped us out of goats & sheep, we got Great Pyrenees dogs. They have been wonderful. I wish we had them 6 months earlier, it would have saved us a lot of money replacing animals.

Jean

 

[foxtrapper]

4 foot fence, took the turkey outside it.

Coyote, dog, fox, cougar, bobcat, racoon (less likely). All are capable of carrying a turkey over a 4 foot fence. The coon is borderline. That's a lot of dead animal for a coon to carry over a fence.

If you look at the fence, you may gleen some additional information. If there are obvious signs of the carcass being dragged up and over the fence, you can be pretty sure the predator climbed the fence. If there are no signs on the fence, it may have simply leaped the fence carrying the carcass.

Breast and guts were consumed.

That's fairly typical of any predator. Humans are about the only thing interested in "meat". It's the guts that are prime for predators typically. This would pretty well knock out domestic dog. They will tend to play with the dead bird, and sloppily gnaw all over it.

Being consumed effectively on site reduces the likelyhood of it being coyote or dog. They tend to carry prey off to a location they perceive as safe. I'm not familiar with cats enough to comment on their habits.

 

[gila_dog]

I built my chicken pen with 4 ft high "field fence" (small rectangles at the bottom, becoming bigger toward the top), with a couple of strands of barbless wire above that, to a height of about 5 ft. Then I hog ringed some 3 ft high chicken wire along the bottom of that. It kept the chickens in just fine, but something got in and killed all my chickens 3 different times. They usually just disappeared. There are lots of coyotes around here, so they are the most likely villians. A couple of years ago I modified that fence to become what the locals call a coyote fence. I cut several hundred long skinny willow and salt cedar sticks (1" or less diameter, and 6-8 ft long) from the river nearby and wove them vertically down into the wire of the fence every 4 inches or so all the way to the ground. They stick way up above the wire fence in an irregular pattern. Since doing that I have not lost any chickens. I think the coyotes see all those sticks poking way up into the air and extending down to the ground level, and they don't even try to jump it or dig thru it.

Another bad predator is domestic dogs. They will sometimes dig under your fence. To prevent this I took some 3 ft fence wire and laid it out onto the ground around the outside perimeter of my fence. I then hog-ringed it to the existing vertical fence. Then I shoveled some dirt over it to hide it. Now if a dog tries to dig in he will dig where the vertical fence touches the ground and will hit the horizontal buried fence wire and can't go any further. He would have to move out 3 ft or so away to miss that fence wire, and they don't ever do that. This was a lot easier than digging a vertical trench under my existing fence and burying the fence wire that way.