[AT] Thanksgiving Day tractor chores+trees

[Indiana Robinson]

One thing coyotes will eat is chickens. When we raised sheep I would
walk the fields daily and I would see coyote tracks in the snow all of
the time.
I did a lot of research on them and one thing that kept coming up was
that there are good coyotes and bad coyotes (much like dogs and
people) and if you had good coyotes (those that just ate little stuff)
then you should leave them alone. It was indicated that there will
always be a given number of coyotes per sq. mile in any area they
inhabit and if you kill off the coyotes you have more will take their
place and if you kill off good ones their spot may be taken by bad
ones. Of course if you have bad ones then you will want to get rid of
them in hopes that their spot will be taken by good ones.
While they are doing no harm here now all of that blood curdling
howling and carrying on at night can be pretty unnerving.
The problem we had here years ago was the crossing with dogs. The bad
ones were often coy-dogs. They had less fear of dogs and people both
and in some cases were more prone to vicious behavior. They also got a
lot bigger than the original coyotes. While the originals were larger
than a fox they were smaller than many dogs. I have seen coy-dogs that
were as large as a large German Shepherd.
While I would never advocate sending kids out alone after dark many
things get blamed on coyotes just because they are there and a handy
scape-goat.
Some of it reminds me of years ago when a lot more people were getting
wood burning stoves. There was a big increase in house fires largely
due to careless or inexperienced users. The problem though was that
then wood stoves became a scape goat and a huge number of house fires
were blamed on wood stoves when it actually had nothing to do with the
fire but if there was a wood stove in the house it was listed as the
cause. Yes Virginia, while most firefighters are a fine bunch of
fellows there also some really stupid ones out there too. Ask any good
fireman, he can name at least one idiot on every department he has
ever worked with.
 :-)
One local small department was called up on the carpet south of here
back then (1970s) for blaming a fire on a wood stove just because it
was there. It turned out that fire had very obviously started in a
wall 15' feet across the room from the stove in a wall outlet and the
home owner said that they had not had a fire in that stove for 3
weeks. Not only did the state fire marshal's office challenge the
little local departments silly findings, they did it publicly and in a
very chaste manner which was quite rare.
With coyotes it tends to be a case of hear a few coyotes and lose a
chicken so it must have been the coyotes. It may have been the
neighbors dog or a raccoon instead but nobody heard them making all of
those spooky noises.
:-)
Over population can be a problem with any wildlife and coyotes are no
exception. Numbers had kind of stabilized around here but I suspect
the numbers are creeping up again. It may become necessary to "thin"
their numbers again.
I think the white tail deer numbers are getting a little high again
now too. The deer were very costly to me several years ago when their
numbers got too high and they pretty much ate one years corn profits
and then some.


--
"farmer"

"Good clean muck never hurt nobody!!!"
Morris Moulterd


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Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com