*** I posted this on another list but thought it might be useful posted here also...
***
Heel low:
Owned our Conservation Farm since 1998 so it is not an overnight project to get a place predator proofed. That said, we only ever lost one bantam Brahma retired hen on Earth Day 2007; yard bird decided to stay out and one of the many welcomed rodent harvesting owls ate her. My fault, complacent about head count after years of doing it. Back at it.
We tried our best not to expand too quickly. Easiest part is getting the critters, longest hardest and most expensive part, the facilities to house them well by. So many fun things about having animals and birds, but the real work and cost for us, the place to keep them from harm--that is the place where hard work reaps rewards.
One year, neighbours baited a babe black bear by covering a 4x8 sheet of plywood with bird seed in the fall time, then chased him into our place...poor thing!
All are shut up at night. Hardware cloth, 2 x 12 wooden planking, gravel and no debris around pens. Sliding doors with metal welded panels over the windows. Over 30+ outbuildings. Metal roofed. Ruminants (goats, sheep, & llamas <--useless predator animals...useless!) are metal corralled with welded wire on fences. Cougar and bear proofed barns. On a grizzly bear's route too. So no eggs, certainly NO bodies about. Before we got creatures, left some household garbage in a shed and then the coyotes made a 90 day habit of checking to see if we did it again...not ever now. One egg in a five gallon pail by the garage, brought in a skunk.
If'n you have predators, that is YOUR fault not theirs for invading their space. If we want to keep delicious poultry, sheep, goats, pigs and even dogs...we must protect our property with decent facilities and NO temptations or attractants.
We ran a length of hardware cloth around our bird yard...
It makes coming into the bird yard an ordeal. Gotta breach the triple perimeter, negotiate the cross fencing, then get over the hardware cloth before you even GET to the birds which are never outside in the dark. I don't let the animals out unless I am home to keep an eye on the goings on. Sure, predation can happen in the day time...but I am there to catch them in the act.
2008 - Birds out in the bird yard...I am home too!
Expensive, you bet but I don't have to run outside half dressed for work because some 'yote is trying to pull one of my precious beasts off the place. Time consuming, you bet...been at this since 1998 and never quite done. We have security cameras to deter the human predators, not the beasts past would be nice to know why the security lights just came on...besides the roving neighbours felines.
Front pasture and New Orchard
Perimeter triple fenced and cross fenced and fenced again!
How many kinds of predators...from the yearly fall visitations by bears and cougars, to the eagles, resident owls and other raptors, to skunks, the neighbours dogs and cats, the two legged predators (every single door is padlocked and locked up each evening), etc. How did we celebrate the new millennium, listening to our resident pack of coyotes howling by our fence. We watch for tracks along the fenceline but because we are so heavily cross fenced and triple perimeter fenced...they walk up, survey the situation and decide the neighbours place is more favourable for a meal than ours. Too much work to get in and once in, how you getting out.
Swan building under construction
Two Pear-A-Dice geese buildings behind
I used two strands of ele netting and portable charger, for fencing temporarily so my ruminants can clear the ditches out...fire hazard to tossed cigs off the roads.
There are enough other issues in this nasty world that can happen to have one lose livestock (then deadstock) that I can't bear to endure losing them to predators too. Blah!
Swan house completed in 2013 -
Zero predation
Love the wildlife here...it belongs here, we humans don't. So we enjoy the wilds and we respect that at any moment, my one time only record of losing an old stewing hen...could be upped.
One is never finished fencing...one is never done due diligence. ONE is never 100% safe but so it goes. Mistakes are what learn us up and ensures we do better. For birds of prey, double top your wired pens with a distance of about a foot (owls can sit on top of a wired run, grab ducks that fly straight up and keep doing that because they can't get the prey out the pen and have to drop it dead to the ground. Or better yet, metal roofing like we have done.
As far as shooting coyotes and other predators...woe to any that think that's a solution. For every hole in a territory seems only to encourage three fold more to investigate the gap and see if it is worth taking on as their own. I would far sooner live with our resident pack of coyotes that accept, we failed once back in 1998 and learned not to leave ANY delectable garage out for attracting troubles. And BTW, use to work long time ago for a Conservation Office and problem wildlife reporting was one of MY duties...the triple bagged garbage still attracted bears, the garbage inside a shed still attracted predators...the frozen cin a buns in a freezer in an outdoor garage still incited the siding to be taken off the building...sigh. The unpicked windfallen apples still attracted beasts, the cougars still hunted household pets and lawn tamed deer...basically wildlife has to be TAUGHT to know what a food source was and a coyote pup is more scared of a sheep than the ewe is afraid of the varmit. But once fed or shown how to hunt domestics...that then becomes a much easier source of food than the wild kind. Not happy for human or wildlife.
Some coyote tips.
- When fencing, don't top the fence with a board or something a coyote can see and judge distance from...they will tend to leap higher if they can judge better how high to jump or even jump off the top rail so to speak.
- Don't use any type of carrion or gut piles to teach the predators how very good sheep, goat or poultry tastes. We've never had a problem with the coyote population here wanting to eat sheep, goat or llama. They are oblivious that this is a food source, plan on keeping it that way.
- Keep your outbuildings and farm clean. No brush piles, garbage or refuse to sneak around.
- Security lights, they have the solar kind now, they are great at POOFing an unexpected visitor.
- Security cameras and game cameras - great way to know what is on your land.
- Dawn to Dusk - no temptations left out and about...locked up tight in the barns and coops.
- Dogs of any kind and fashion...the marking of territory puts up the sensible alert to the 'yotes that not just humans reside here...
- Fences and cross fences. A predators worst nightmare is going in and not being able to negotiate back out. If a coyote gets injured trying to get a meal, that's pretty much their life over. Easy to get without incident. Some complain that a predator got IN their coop and then proceeded to kill everything inside that moved...yup, threat to the predator.
- Anti-dig strip; alot of work, sure but bury page wire along a pen under gravel. Predators tend to stand at the fence and then try to dig under, not knowing to step back of the wire and begin digging. No debris, you can visually inspect your perimeter for any activity and rectify the issue before the predator gets in with your beasts. Make the your breaching of your perimeter not worth the effort.
I worked for Alberta Ag coupla decades ago...fencing tips on coyote proofing.
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex888
And many would look at our set up and call it Ft. Knox...no regrets here and why yes, we do have the gaggles of geriatric geese to go with Fort Knox too come to think of it.
You may live in harmony with predators...we do and love that. Nothing makes me smile more than to hear the yip of the 'yotes, knowing full well I can sleep soundly at night because it won't be our beasts they are dining on tonight.
About the only thing we have not been able to keep away from the critters...the grim reaper...
Old age takes all of us and I guess if you gotta go, best it be in the shade on a nice summer's day. Not savagely chased, mauled and torment by monster predators. I'd far rather wring my animal's necks, quick and thorough than let them fall to predation.
Doggone & Chicken UP!w
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
There are days where I rush in for the p.m. bus run and Rick says...you are not going like THAT are you? Half dressed for work, getting rid of the scratch, sniff, & guess what pen I was in chore clothes! 
