Glenda,

I am sorry to hear about the calf. That's the third one this year, right?

So, the llama will be your guardian animal that looks after the calves? That's pretty cool. I've seen llamas here in some pastures with either goats or sheep.

Is is coming back and getting calves in the same general area, or is it striking at different locations on your property?

I think maybe the scent of humans will scare away a big cat, but on the other hand, both my 'guests' last year apparently weren't bothered by the human scent and dog scent all around my garden, so who knows?

Dawn

Glenda,

That is so scary, and I am very sorry.

Jo

(1) I am very sorry to hear you lost another calf.

(2) I am very pleased to know you have a camera and will be excited if you finally get a picture so you can have proof for the 'unbelievers'.

(3) We have a lady here that raises llamas and she has had them attacked. I don't know if they were protecting their young or not, but they must have put up a good fight.

(4) I hope you will both be heavily armed if you spend the night in that truck. Good luck.

Two were fairly close to each other; one close to a steam that runs into a pond and the other just south at spring fed waterer that overflows making the stream into said pond.

This kill was quite some distance, middle of the farm, middle of a 7-acre field where there is a close by water source of an inground waterer off the well.

I think I have the camera working. I hope. I have done some test photo inside; the quality wasn't great.

Oh, no! Were there any prints or anything? I think it's recently rained there so I was hoping but there's so much that can interfere with that. Your neighbor has prints, though?

What a horrifying thing.

Diane

If it was a cat kill it is pretty easy to prove it for experts, and the body will usually be covered with debris in brush and not have limbs torn off. The cat will almost certainly hang out in the area for a few days eating the remains at night.

Any cat in Missouri will almost certainly be a young male that has traveled from states to the west of you, so it will not be hanging around in the same area for very many days.

Good luck getting rid of it, whatever it turns out to be. There are probably 10,000 coyotes packs minimum in Missouri, not to mention thousands of wild dogs and thousands of bobcats, so the odds of it being one of likely a handful of mountain lions that may roam the state at any given time is pretty small. Still there is that chance.

Glenda,
I know how you are feeling. Hope you find out what it is and get it controlled soon. Every calf is several dollars and also as an owner/caretaker of livestock you feel responsible for their care and well being. Keep us informed what you find out. Jay

!Warning! Gross description following!

If you suspect a cat, you can also skin the calf and determine the predator responsible from the inside of the hide; cats jump on the back, (you'll find claw marks from back feet as they try to keep their balance), and reach under, pull the nose in and either bite the back of the neck breaking the spinal cord or lean under and crush the windpipe. It's very easy to measure claw marks from the inside too, so you can accurately determine the size animal your dealing with.

Dogs and coyotes, especially those working in a pack, will attack the nose, ears, belly and back legs, trying to get the animal stopped so it can be pulled down and disemboweled. Domestic dogs out on a spree will attack several animals in a group, just whatever catches their eyes as it runs by; when a domestic dog gets in an enclosed area with a herd of goats or flock of sheep or several mare/colt or cow/calf pairs, it's not uncommon to find every animal has either been damaged or killed, and none eaten. Coyotes will usually pull down the smallest and weakest animals in a group. If it's a small enough animal, they'll carry it away, and if you track them, you'll find bits and pieces of it along the trail where they pulled it apart and ate on the run.

I'd skip the Llama and get at least one adult livestock guardian dog. They may be "fighters", but a Llama is still a prey animal, AKA "dinner". I know an adult, proven dog that has been raised with livestock is expensive, but then, so is loosing calves.

There's an old saying that the easiest way to tell how many LGDs you need for the predators you have is to keep adding dogs until you have no more losses. So, a well mowed ten acre tract that is MOL all visible from the house might only need one alert dog that will bark when it hears a racket, 40 wooded acres on the side of a mountain might need two, and a 200 acre place bordered by a state park that is being hit by a pack of coyotes or a lion with cubs might need three to four. If you're in an area that has wolves - thankfully NOT in this part of the country - producers say you almost need one dog per wolf to keep the pack at bay.

We have a small place, partially wooded, surrounded by undeveloped, open woods, and use 2 adult LGDs in the pens with the does and kids, and have two more young dogs in training.

If you're dead set against a big dog, try a donkey; now "that's* a fighter, especially with canines. (Coyotes, wild dogs, stray dogs, and even your household pets, should they be careless enough to wander into the field with Longears on duty) Donkeys that are bonded to their charges will round up the other animals and run them away from danger. Donkeys that are not especially bonded tend to bully the other animals and bite off ears and tails, so make sure you get one that's been with cattle.

I hesitate to mention this because I know it's going to sound gross, but one other thing you can try until you can get a dog or donkey, save your urine in a jug and dribble it out along the perimeter of your fence, especially across any trails you find that lead into your pasture. Even if all you have is a little Beagle, take it with you to mark the territory, and make alot of racket as your doing it in case whatever it is has found a nice spot to nap nearby. Do that several times a week, and sometimes, you can discourage a wild predator from coming onto your place and it will alter it's territory without your ever having seen it. It won't work with domestic dogs, or small mammals like raccoons, but it can deter a bobcat or coyotes.

Whatever you decide to do, I hope you can get the problem animal dead or gone ASAP.

Donkeys seem to be the animal of choice in this part of the county.

Donkeys and llamas are both good for protecting livestock from dogs/coyotes; but big cats are another thing entirely. Neither will help you with cats. I've had a donkey for years and she will herd/protect/etc. We had pigs that used to get out of their pen and she would pick them up by an ear and throw them back in (until they got too big!).

If I had a cat problem in addition to a dog/coyote problem, I'd go for a Great Pyrenees--or two depending upon the size of your place.

Anna

LGD's have been attacked west of here and injured badly in the last year by the big cats. I think there may of only been either 1 or 2 both times I know about. I'm not sure what breed. I think I know what breed the one attack was but not positive. From what I've seen the big cats aren't afraid of much. Jay

The MDC agent called me back. He had also emailed me. In the email he says he and another agent think coyote. The last kill had all of the intestines eaten; nothing covered up; not like a big cat. But when he called he didn't stress the coyote, more a bobcat. We know we have lots of coyotes just never suffered them attacking anything.

The camera is giving me problems; I can't seem to get the night shots. I finally reset everything to factory default. Walked in front of it in a pitch black room; no flash; no picture yet when I picked the camera up this morning, the flash went off. DH thinks we should send it back.

He is now checking the cattle three times a day and going out before daylight and after dark. The agent thought the more activity of humans in the area, the better.

He hasn't come back in this morning yet.

I am just curious why coyotes would suddenly start attacking the calves when there is an abundance of rabbits, turkeys, etc.

Seems a little strange to me also.

I think some (most)of the cameras do not take pictures well in hot weather because of the trigger mechanism being sensing objects hotter than the air around them. Try setting it up in your house in air conditioning and walk in front of it at different distances and see how it does.

Glenda,

One of the things I learned after moving here that really surprised me is that sometimes coyotes mate with domestic dogs (albeit, the domestic dogs may be those that have been abandoned and which have become feral) and produce a dog-coyote hybrid. Those dog-coyote hybrids sometimes cause problems for local ranchers and farmers (especially those close to the wild riverbanks areas along the Red River) by preying upon young calves and colts as well as goats, sheep and poultry since they don't fear humans as much as normal coytoes do. The rancher who was teaching me about them [we had a rather bold (and gorgeous) one in the area at the time] warned me that the hybrids have enough domestic dog genes in them that they often do not fear humans and will come much closer to humans than a normal coyote will.

In fact, that was the exact problem I was having. When I was walking my leashed dogs on our country road, the coyote-dog hybrid would not turn and run from us when we crossed paths, and in fact would come straight towards us. It would keep coming towards us and I had to be the one that turned and headed back home because it would not back down. Once it even followed us for some distance even though I was walking backwards towards home and waving my arms and shouting at it. It just was not the least bit intimidated by us, but my usually rowdy dogs were very intimidated by it. As you know, usually when a coyote sees you it will put its tail between its legs and slink away quite quickly, but these hybrids do not exhibit that fear at all.

One day that same rancher and I were standing beside the road talking and that golden-coated coyote-dog hybrid approached us and the rancher confirmed it was a hybrid. (To me it just looked a coyote with an especially lovely golden coat that looked more like the coat of a Golden Retriever.) That animal was a problem for several months until it either died, was killed or moved on elsewhere. While coyote-dog hybrids probably are not terribly common, we do see them here so I expect they exist everywhere even if in limited numbers. I was sort of half-relieved to know coyote-dog hybrids existed because several years ago I kept seeing a 'red wolf' when walking the dogs one spring. I knew that there are no red wolves here, but that was exactly what it looked like and it definitely was not a common domestic dog. Based on what I later learned about the coyote-dog hybrids, I believe that is what it was.

During the last month or so, some so-called sightings of chupacabras in the region just south of Fort Worth have been determined to be coyote-dog hybrids via DNA testing done on a dead 'chupacabra'.

So, you might have a coyote-dog hybrid or two in the area and they might be preying more upon domestic animals because they often do not avoid human contact/human scent as much as regular coyotes do.

Dawn

Littledog, I have heard the urine thing before but with 175 acres I don't think it is possible here!

It has been suggested we round up the 70 or so cows and calves and corral them near the house. Have you ever tried to round up a herd of cattle that are belly deep in grass? They aren't too interested in following the truck and if you can get them to, the blasted babies don't come with them. It takes my husband a couple of days just to move them from one field to the next. There are always some lingerers that won't go. We need a couple of good cattle dogs...........but that is another story.

I just talked with our neighbor and her son has a friend who traps bobcats (in season) and they had wondered about trapping. I told them they would be welcome and could also hunt at night if they were careful about shooting the cows.

I am thinking the more traffic we can get the better.

Feral dogs are the bane of our existence here...or just area dogs that are allowed to run free. My only significant livestock losses have been to running dogs. Especially when there's a female in heat, they'll pack up and become a menace at times. I had a bunch of them literally scale our fence, come into the back yard, and decapitate a young nanny goat--right under my bedroom window. We eventually eliminated all of them: after giving the neighbors a warning that it would be open season on dogs that habitually were coming onto our land. (I can't tell you how many times we've taken folks' dogs home to them and even adopted one whose owner refused to be responsible for.)

Coyotes dearly love eating new calves' poop, it's a magnet sometimes. Occasionally they will then attack a calf, and it seems like once they get a taste for it, they're hard to stop. Once in a while you'll get a few rogue males that have been tossed out of the pack and they'll go after just about anything.

I look for people I know that like to varmint hunt and invite them to come over. All it takes is knocking off a few and the rest seem to hightail it out of the area. When I lived up in St. Charles County, Missouri, we had guys with coyote dogs that would turn their dogs loose and those hounds would run them clear into the next county...and that kept the numbers down.

You can trap coyotes, and fairly successfully if there's not a lot of trapping done in your area. It doesn't take them long to get trap-wise.

Back when I spent time on a livestock guardian forum, there were several anecdotal reports of livestock dogs inter-breeding with coyotes--especially on ranches where the dogs might not see an owner for a couple days at a time. I'm really happy with my donkey and we've not had any trouble with anything like that in several years.

Anna