Coyote problems on the Farm

For almost three years we have been able to free range our chickens with only the occasional loss to a hawk during the winter (only the winter it seems…must have to do with the leaves all being off the trees). That was until the past three months. Over the last three months or so we have been losing chickens mysteriously one after another. With a hawk strike there is clear evidence of the kill and it is obvious what got the chicken, but these chickens were just disappearing. We were dumbfounded, until about two weeks ago. I was sitting out on our back porch when I heard an enormous racket coming from a group of chickens that were charging up the hill and out of the trees that head down to the big creek. As I watched, right behind this group of chickens came this grey canine with pointed ears, bushy tail and a pointed snout…

in other words a damn coyote.

Fortunately the coyote stopped right at the tree line and the chickens got away…this time. This was in broad daylight. Smack in the middle of the afternoon. I had always heard that coyotes hunted at twilight and so figured that if our chickens were put away each evening in their very secure chicken house that we had nothing to worry about. I guess this coyote was proving me wrong.

Now I knew what was getting our chickens, but the predation just continued. We lost two more chickens, one on Sunday and another yesterday bring the total loss to this coyote to 10. I had had enough.

So today the whole family was out first thing this morning putting up some temporary welded wire fencing to keep our chickens contained and out of the woods and hopefully keep the coyote out of where the chickens are. That is the first line of defense. The second is a tree stand over looking the path along the creek I know the coyote is traveling and my 12 gauge shotgun.

We may have to put up some permanent woven wire fencing with electric wire on the outside as a future precaution. We value our chickens having the freedom to free range so it might be quite a chore to run that kind of fencing in a big enough area to continue to give them that kind of “protected” free ranging.