Nyboy
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You sir are a man of many talents.
Coyote eradication methods sought
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Smart Red
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Like me, CeeCee is an aging female. The only chocolate (lab) I keep around. At her best she wouldn't be an effective protection dog. She is certainly not at her best now that she's 12 years old.
baymule
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Red, you will either have to confine your chickens, high wire fence your place, or fence it to keep a large dog in and get a Livestock Guard Dog. And be advised, that even LGD's go through an attack of stupid about 9 months of age and chickens are the ultimate squeaky toy. Training and patience is required. Our female Great Pyrenees was free because she killed chickens, it took me 2 years (they really screwed her up) to turn her around. She became a fantastic chicken guard. Our male GP took some training to know that chickens were MINE and he was not supposed to chase them.
Beekissed
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Especially if she's not lived outdoors doing that job all her life.
Coincidentally, Jake is also a Choco Lab, though he's mixed with a Blue Merle Border Collie, and he's 11 now, has been doing this job since he was 5 mo. old~killed his first predator at that age too~full grown coon~ but is still very active on the job and faster than the 2 yr old LGD. He dominates the play and will put the younger dog in his place in a heartbeat, though the younger dog outweighs by a good 50+ lbs. He can still catch his own supper too...came home one day to find him finishing up a big rabbit.
He was, always has been, and still is a very effective chicken dog, though he was far too dog friendly~wanted to play with them~ and didn't react aggressively towards aerial preds like I would have liked.
All dogs age differently, though, so can't really be compared, can they? Nor can predator pressure and what nature of predators one has. Whereas coyotes are very wary in these parts due to being everyone's favorite target practice, they may not be so shy where you live and may risk attacking your lone dog in broad daylight.
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Smart Red
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Discussing the coyote in my back yard with my BFF1 brought her comment that she had seen several of them running together in her driveway one day last week. It gave her quite a fright because she was out of her car and across the road before she spotted them.
Since she's only a mile away . . . .
Since she's only a mile away . . . .
Beekissed
Garden Master
Might be this year's pups running together. My mom was walking back from the mailbox~quarter mile walk~and came face to face with a young one about this time of year. He popped up over the ridge, they both saw one another from about 5 yds distance, froze and then he turned tail and disappeared like smoke on the water.
She said he was a young one, didn't look quite full size but definitely getting there.
She said he was a young one, didn't look quite full size but definitely getting there.
Ridgerunner
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I'm late to the conversation too. We just got back from Pigeon Forge with all three boys, spouses, and grandkids.
Red I don't know where you stand with that fence but I agree electricity is the best answer. I use electric netting but if I were doing it again I'd probably go with an electric fence in conjunction with a 2x4 welded wire fence. I got my netting from Premier1 and find them really helpful on technical questions when I call.
For electricity to work you need a hot wire and a ground. With the netting the horizontal wires are hot and the ground is your ground. With an electric fence with mesh fence, the hot wires are hot and the fence or the ground is the ground. The netting does not work in snow. I'm not sure if it's because a wet snow shorts it out or a dry snow insulates the critter from the ground. When I asked Premier1 if netting works in snow the lady just said "no", I did not ask why. I imagine an electric fence works well in the snow as long as the lower hot wire is not grounded. Maybe someone that uses fencing can comment on that.
That doesn't mean the netting is worthless in snow. What normally happens with a coyote or about any other critter that can jump or climb over it or dig under it, they investigate the fence first. They typically use their nose or tongue. Somebody on the chicken forum said they bait their hot wire with peanut butter to make sure they test it with their tongue. A critter may test it once or twice but once they are bitten they tend to not get anywhere around it again. So even when it is shorted out in snow or the power is off it is still a deterrent. But new critters that haven't tested it are being born and weaned all the time so it's better for it to remain hot. My biggest problem is not the wild animals around here but has been the dogs that people abandon out here. I'll admit there is a certain satisfaction in hearing a dog yelp and see it running away, unhurt but unlikely to return. Of course I'd prefer it to be the owner that abandoned them but you can't have everything.
My netting system runs on 7000+ volts. The tester only goes up to 7000 volts. It will get your attention if you touch it but I've touched it a few times. The danger is not the volts, it's amps. There is a built in safety system too, it's not a steady current but it pulses. I think there are something like 50 pulses a minute. If it were a steady current it could kill but since it pulses you and the critters can turn loose. Trust me, your reflexes will cause you to turn it loose. A critter's fur or a chicken's feathers will insulate them from the current, but if they touch the hot wires and the ground at the same time with an uninsulated part, like their feet, tongue, nose, comb, or wattles, they are not insulated. I've seen chickens get shocked. They jump back, squawk, and resume feeding. My baby chicks can walk through the netting until they are maybe 6 to 7 weeks old. Their down and feathers insulate them.
My netting has killed a few critters. if something gets caught or is too slow to turn loose the constant pulsing paralyses it and can eventually kill it. I've had three turtles get up against it. Two eventually recovered and walked away when I released them (fun with snapping turtles) but one was caught long enough to die. I've seen a few frogs get caught and die. Once a 5' black racer got caught, I guess they don't back up well. I hated it that it died. And once an opossum got tangled up. The electricity is not what killed it.
My netting is about 48" high. The chickens can easily fly over that if they want to, but mine generally don't. I raise cockerels and pullets with the flock. I used to have a lot of cockerels fly out before I learned a couple of tricks. The cockerels would get in their little fights and the loser would get trapped against the fence. When panic hit they go vertical to get away and land outside the fence. Of course they don't know enough to fly back inside, though you can see that they want back home. I now make sure my corners aren't really sharp. 90 degree corners are OK but flatter is better. I've also learned to avoid long narrow corridors. I once configured it with a 15' wide corridor to reach a wider space further out and two or three cockerels were getting out daily. It didn't take long for me to reconfigure that into a wide area.
One of the big issues with electricity is that vegetation can ground it out. Grass and weeds will grow up In it and, when wet, short it out. Another issue I have with my netting that a fence probably wouldn't have is that dead leaves or cut grass can get washed up against it when I have a frog-strangling gully-washer. That shorts it out. Weed eaters are murder on electric netting. That means when the grass and weeds get tall enough to short it out you need to take it down and mow. You might put It back up where it was or mow a different area first to move it to. How often you have to do that depends on how fast the vegetation grows which depends on the of year and how much rain you get. I can take mine down, mow, and put it back up by myself in two hours or less. It would go a lot easier with a second person. To me that's the biggest disadvantage to the netting. You should be able to set an electric fence up so you could weed eat.
My chicken density is low enough that the area inside the netting is not a barren wasteland. The chickens eat certain vegetation and let the rest grow. That means a few times a year I have to mow inside the netting to knock down the bad stuff and let the good stuff grow. Yu need a way to get a mower inside the fenced in area, netting or fence.
I've had my netting for about five years. In that time I've lost two chickens, one to an owl and one to a hawk. In the three years before I got the netting I lost two chickens to wild animals, but I lost eight one time and five the next to dogs people had abandoned. I consider my netting to be a good investment.
Thinking about the saga with your neighbors, I don't think shooting the coyote is an option. Wouldn't they love to get that deputy back out there? Trapping it is possibly an option but then you have to dispose of the darn thing. You might want to investigate whether or not there are legal restrictions about electric netting or fences, some jurisdictions have them.
That's enough typing this morning. If you have any specific questions I'll be glad to try to answer, especially on the netting. Others on here have better experience with fencing.
Red I don't know where you stand with that fence but I agree electricity is the best answer. I use electric netting but if I were doing it again I'd probably go with an electric fence in conjunction with a 2x4 welded wire fence. I got my netting from Premier1 and find them really helpful on technical questions when I call.
For electricity to work you need a hot wire and a ground. With the netting the horizontal wires are hot and the ground is your ground. With an electric fence with mesh fence, the hot wires are hot and the fence or the ground is the ground. The netting does not work in snow. I'm not sure if it's because a wet snow shorts it out or a dry snow insulates the critter from the ground. When I asked Premier1 if netting works in snow the lady just said "no", I did not ask why. I imagine an electric fence works well in the snow as long as the lower hot wire is not grounded. Maybe someone that uses fencing can comment on that.
That doesn't mean the netting is worthless in snow. What normally happens with a coyote or about any other critter that can jump or climb over it or dig under it, they investigate the fence first. They typically use their nose or tongue. Somebody on the chicken forum said they bait their hot wire with peanut butter to make sure they test it with their tongue. A critter may test it once or twice but once they are bitten they tend to not get anywhere around it again. So even when it is shorted out in snow or the power is off it is still a deterrent. But new critters that haven't tested it are being born and weaned all the time so it's better for it to remain hot. My biggest problem is not the wild animals around here but has been the dogs that people abandon out here. I'll admit there is a certain satisfaction in hearing a dog yelp and see it running away, unhurt but unlikely to return. Of course I'd prefer it to be the owner that abandoned them but you can't have everything.
My netting system runs on 7000+ volts. The tester only goes up to 7000 volts. It will get your attention if you touch it but I've touched it a few times. The danger is not the volts, it's amps. There is a built in safety system too, it's not a steady current but it pulses. I think there are something like 50 pulses a minute. If it were a steady current it could kill but since it pulses you and the critters can turn loose. Trust me, your reflexes will cause you to turn it loose. A critter's fur or a chicken's feathers will insulate them from the current, but if they touch the hot wires and the ground at the same time with an uninsulated part, like their feet, tongue, nose, comb, or wattles, they are not insulated. I've seen chickens get shocked. They jump back, squawk, and resume feeding. My baby chicks can walk through the netting until they are maybe 6 to 7 weeks old. Their down and feathers insulate them.
My netting has killed a few critters. if something gets caught or is too slow to turn loose the constant pulsing paralyses it and can eventually kill it. I've had three turtles get up against it. Two eventually recovered and walked away when I released them (fun with snapping turtles) but one was caught long enough to die. I've seen a few frogs get caught and die. Once a 5' black racer got caught, I guess they don't back up well. I hated it that it died. And once an opossum got tangled up. The electricity is not what killed it.
My netting is about 48" high. The chickens can easily fly over that if they want to, but mine generally don't. I raise cockerels and pullets with the flock. I used to have a lot of cockerels fly out before I learned a couple of tricks. The cockerels would get in their little fights and the loser would get trapped against the fence. When panic hit they go vertical to get away and land outside the fence. Of course they don't know enough to fly back inside, though you can see that they want back home. I now make sure my corners aren't really sharp. 90 degree corners are OK but flatter is better. I've also learned to avoid long narrow corridors. I once configured it with a 15' wide corridor to reach a wider space further out and two or three cockerels were getting out daily. It didn't take long for me to reconfigure that into a wide area.
One of the big issues with electricity is that vegetation can ground it out. Grass and weeds will grow up In it and, when wet, short it out. Another issue I have with my netting that a fence probably wouldn't have is that dead leaves or cut grass can get washed up against it when I have a frog-strangling gully-washer. That shorts it out. Weed eaters are murder on electric netting. That means when the grass and weeds get tall enough to short it out you need to take it down and mow. You might put It back up where it was or mow a different area first to move it to. How often you have to do that depends on how fast the vegetation grows which depends on the of year and how much rain you get. I can take mine down, mow, and put it back up by myself in two hours or less. It would go a lot easier with a second person. To me that's the biggest disadvantage to the netting. You should be able to set an electric fence up so you could weed eat.
My chicken density is low enough that the area inside the netting is not a barren wasteland. The chickens eat certain vegetation and let the rest grow. That means a few times a year I have to mow inside the netting to knock down the bad stuff and let the good stuff grow. Yu need a way to get a mower inside the fenced in area, netting or fence.
I've had my netting for about five years. In that time I've lost two chickens, one to an owl and one to a hawk. In the three years before I got the netting I lost two chickens to wild animals, but I lost eight one time and five the next to dogs people had abandoned. I consider my netting to be a good investment.
Thinking about the saga with your neighbors, I don't think shooting the coyote is an option. Wouldn't they love to get that deputy back out there? Trapping it is possibly an option but then you have to dispose of the darn thing. You might want to investigate whether or not there are legal restrictions about electric netting or fences, some jurisdictions have them.
That's enough typing this morning. If you have any specific questions I'll be glad to try to answer, especially on the netting. Others on here have better experience with fencing.
Last edited:
Beekissed
Garden Master
I agree with all of that! If I ever do the electronetting again I'd put landscaping cloth under the line all the way around, though not sure if that would cancel out the grounding...shouldn't. But my problem was the chickens would scratch small twigs and leaves up against the line and short it out and I was using a solar charger, so it would be drained of power and I didn't even know it.
Due to all of that, I'd probably just use regular hot wire fencing if I ever had to do pred fencing again.
Due to all of that, I'd probably just use regular hot wire fencing if I ever had to do pred fencing again.
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Smart Red
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Thanks, Ducks. Lots to think about. While I don't use chemicals in or around food, I think I would go for a vegitation killer along the fence line. That way I wouldn't have to worry about shorting out.
I'm doing 2x4 inch woven wire 4 ft high with, perhaps, with a bit of chicken wire above that to allow higher fence. I figure the strands of electric fencing on the woven part will keep varmints from getting to the chicken wire.
I also plan to build a section of cover for the birds' protection since I can't net the whole orchard area.
I'm doing 2x4 inch woven wire 4 ft high with, perhaps, with a bit of chicken wire above that to allow higher fence. I figure the strands of electric fencing on the woven part will keep varmints from getting to the chicken wire.
I also plan to build a section of cover for the birds' protection since I can't net the whole orchard area.
Nyboy
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Any puppies in your future ?
