Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 9, 1995 TAG: 9506090100
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Yaieeeeeyoooow!
That's no wild creature hollering. It's Montgomery County farmer Bill McDonald.
He's hurt. Over the past three weeks, he's lost 22 lambs and 14 kid goats to the ravaging jaws of coyotes.
The wily animals have taken about a third of his spring lamb crop - just when lamb prices were climbing back to a decent level. McDonald is looking at a loss of about $70 per head for the lambs and $35 each for the young goats.
Coyotes typically are thought of as predators of the American West or characters in Roadrunner cartoons, but they range from the Mexican border to New England. They started showing up in significant numbers in Montgomery County around 1990.
Relatives of domesticated dogs, coyotes look like small wolves. Sometimes they even breed with dogs or wolves.
Their preferred method of killing young lambs is to grab them by the throat, choking them. The lamb dies in 10 minutes or so, and the predator feasts on its blood-engorged heart, lungs and liver.
Some of McDonald's neighbors have also lost animals, but they've had nowhere near the problems he's had.
Farmer J. Lee Wall said he may have lost one lamb to a coyote but couldn't confirm it because the vultures had eaten too much of the carcass before it was found. Wall said he's been putting the lambs in the barn at night since then, but that's costing him because sheep graze mostly at night during the summer. They don't put on weight while they're penned up.
Virginia Tech also lost an ewe at a farm on Prices Fork on May 19 to a coyote, said Phil Keffer, who helps manage Tech's sheep flock. Keffer said he reported the incident to a local dog warden.
Coyotes have become such a problem for farmers in Virginia that the state agriculture department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are sharing the cost of a USDA wildlife biologist to deal with them. The effort seems to be paying off.
The U.S. Agricultural Statistics Service estimated that in 1990, the year the coyote-control program began, coyotes killed 4,100 ewes and lambs in Virginia. Common dogs killed another 3,300.
By 1994, the estimated sheep kills by coyotes had dropped to 1,125, while estimated kills by dogs had climbed to 3,800.
Kills that were confirmed by USDA biologists in the field support the estimates. In 1990, biologists confirmed 550 kills by coyotes; in 1994, the figure dropped to 363.
"We've reduced sheep predation significantly," said John Houben, a biologist with USDA's animal damage control agency. Houben, who is in charge of keeping coyotes in check in Virginia, is based in Blacksburg because most of the state's sheep farming is west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
During the first five months of 1995, the number of confirmed sheep kills by coyotes in Virginia dropped 35 percent to 138, down from 212 last year.
There's no silver bullet for dealing with coyotes, Houben said - although farmers can use real bullets if they manage to catch one in the open. The animals are not considered endangered and are not protected by a hunting season.
Houben says farmers should take a variety of steps to combat the predators. He suggests the use of guard dogs or other guardian animals such as llamas or donkeys.
McDonald has a guard dog, but it's 13 years old and not up to snuff - or maybe sniff - when it comes to coyotes.
It's harder to stop coyotes when they've become as well established as they are at McDonald's place, Houben said. McDonald's situation is not typical, Houben said. "In general, we've been doing pretty good."
by CNB