Lost our FOURTH to a Coyote.... HELP

[aprophet]

In your second picture where the trees are are up against your grass the edge is a very good place to hang a coupla snares ( if legal in your muniapalitie) @ about 12" loop 12" off the walking surface I am fond of the sennaker snares with the little springs, sorry for my spelling spell check does not work @ this forum and with chrome browser

 

[centrarchid]

I just trap and dispatch the yotes save me a dog food bill

If coyotes removed, then red fox will be more likely to be an issue. Raccoons, oppossums and even hawks will also be issues not recognized by OP. A very important point is that dogs are more fun to pet than traps. Especially the traps you use.

 

[hokankai]

Oh we definitely have hawks in the area. I hear them screeching and I lost some small chicks to a juvenile last year when the door to their moveable run blew off and they got out.

I've never seen coons or opossum attempts at getting into our runs, but I see quite a few as roadkill. When our birds are in their run they're safe, and at night they're even safer. It's when they are having playtime for a few hours during the day that I run into problems.

I'd LOVE to get a LGD, but our property isn't fenced in so that's not happening any time soon.

 

[Red Barn Farms]

Well I think everything has been pretty much mentioned in trying to protect your birds.


Electric Fencing

Electric fencing can be a good option for securing poultry. There are several ways to go about this: one is to have a static coop and run with electric wire run around the bottom of the coop and run so that digging predators can't get in.
Another option is to use electric net fencing to protect your chickens. Predators are stopped, right down to the ground, and the management system of moving your chickens to fresh pasture seems to be an additional effective deterrent.

Poultry Protectors

Guinea fowl are also great guardians of the flock. They will chase off everything from the mailman to coyotes - but beware, their protection comes with a noisy price. Guineas are not quiet animals, and you can't just train them to pipe down like you can with (some) dogs. Still, they have an added benefit: they'll eat every bug you can imagine that might plague the garden and barnyard, from ticks to flies.
Donkeys make wonderful pets. They are also great protectors and will chase off a coyote in record time! They love to kick them to death as a mater of fact.

Sorry about your lose of the chickens. Sounds like though you might need to fence an area in for them to run in.

 

[aprophet]

If coyotes removed, then red fox will be more likely to be an issue. Raccoons, oppossums and even hawks will also be issues not recognized by OP. A very important point is that dogs are more fun to pet than traps. Especially the traps you use.

the traps I use are only tools much like a hammer or a saw, the fox are sold for fur as well my traps work for me minus the feed bill LOL

 

[hokankai]

I would love to trap them but I have no idea how to do anything like that. I don't know anyone who's into hunting or trapping to teach me.

Unfortunately, my not-so-DF has decided he doesn't want to spend the money to put up a fenced in area and said, "It's a lot cheaper to just buy more chickens!" -_- Makes me so frustrated.

We'll see what happens. Today I weed-whacked and used the clippers to clear out some of the brush and made it onto my neighbor's property. He recently roto-tilled his property and it's all clear, so I decided to walk the perimeter down there looking for tunnels in the brush. I definitely found one (I actually smelled skunk when I crawled through it), and they could have gone through where I walked through because it's pretty clear.

Good news is I got my rooster and some hens today and I'm hoping he'll at least be some kind of deterrent or at least helps keep the girls up closer to the house. But they won't be getting unsupervised outside time.

 

[Epreciado]

I was having a similar problem lost over 10 chickens to coyotes and bocats. Everything I did seemed to back fire. So I ended up getting two dogs as puppies kept them with my chickens to train them and havent had an issue with any predators anymore.

 

[red fern farm]

I had this problem a couple of years ago. I have 50 acres, I would be walking around with my chickens, my ducks and my 2 cats and a chicken would be missing. No feathers floating no noise nothing. Day after day it happened, finally put up some borrowed video cameras and found it to be a Coyote stalking us. I would never hear a sound and it would just pick a chicken off. My bother came, sat on my porch when the Coyote approached the line of us he shot it. I still had hens completely disappear, so until I could afford to change what I had I bought 20 hot pepper powder and spread it around my coup and small fence area. That helped. Then I made a 100x100' run, dug trenches put in cinder block and concrete. Put up heavy duty horse small hole mesh (chickens can't get their heads out of the smallest square size), on the sides and top, attached electrical horse fabric (they come in different widths, I chose the widest). I securely attached that electric fabric on top and around the sides. Heard a few yelps outside at night, but I have not lost a chicken to coyote, fox, hawks or coon since. Kinda over-do? I love my animals, it's my responsibility to keep them safe. I've always felt, if you get angry for loosing an animal, domestic or farm kind, it's your own fault for not doing your home work, before I did the overhaul, it was my fault. I had been raised on a farm, but was naive when it came to having my own.

 

[hokankai]

Heard the dang thing tonight. There's only one though, or his pack isn't responding to his howls.

Makes me so frustrated, but I'm feeling more sorry for the guy now. Wolves are my favorite animal, so it's hard to be mad at something so similar. Everything has to eat I guess :\

 

[featherz]

I've been losing birds recently to a fox (I saw him, so I know that's what it was). Just put hot wires on both my coops - let's see how foxie likes that! It really wasn't all that pricey.