Couple dogged by wily coyotes

01-03-2007 | Rachael Gordon

Predators, to most New Zealanders farmers, would probably be rabbits pillaging the vegie garden or feral cats raiding the chook house.

But Mark Ritchie and Cherry Allen must put up with a far more ruthless pest – wild coyotes preying on their sheep.

Predation is the most serious problem on the Canadian pair’s farm. The wild dogs are responsible for a huge number of stock losses, killing and maiming around 40 animals/year. Last summer that number reached 60.

Not only that, they increase the workload by hundreds of hours each year. Mark has to get up every morning at 5am to check the sheep, adding an extra two-and-a-half hours to every working day – and he doesn’t get a break in the weekends.

“If we didn’t have coyotes, life would be so easy. ”

Cherry says that finding sheep mutilated by coyotes is demoralising.

“It’s a horrible thing to wake up to”.

Although the farm is located on an island, the ice-bridge that forms across lake Ontario in winter means the coyotes can come over from the mainland, preventing them from being completely wiped out.

“We try to kill them. We manage to kill about five before the sheep are turned out but its impossible to get them all,” says Mark

He says they are at their worst in summer, as they tend to prey on deer in the winter. “Coyotes start to move down as the sheep start moving out to rental land and they meet up. ”

The couple do however have some weaponry in their war on coyotes. The most effective, by far, are their guard dogs.

They have 10 dogs made up of the large Great Pyrenees, Akbash and Maremma breeds. The guard dogs live with the sheep around the clock to protect them.

If a coyote is spotted, the dogs become very aggressive and give chase. Sometimes they manage to do damage, killing two coyotes last September.

Unfortunately there are sometimes casualties on the dogs side, with three dogs injured in fights over summer. Mark and Cherry think another one was even killed by coyotes after it disappeared into the bush.

Cherry says they were wary of getting them at first.

“We resisted getting them as we couldn’t imagine a dog living with sheep and not worrying them. Now we couldn’t imagine life without them. ”

Training of the dogs commences from the time they are born.

“The first thing a pup sees apart form its mother is sheep,” says Cherry.

The pups then spend all winter in the barn with the sheep, where they learn to live alongside them.

“If pups get too close to lambs, then the mum will belt it,” says Cherry.

Then when the sheep are turned out, the pups are put with an older dog they can learn from, although much of their ability is instinctive.

“We’ve only had one pup we couldn’t train,” says Cherry.

The dogs are quite a big cost to the farm, with $500 being spent on food and vet treatments for each/year.

The pair has also thought up other, non-lethal ways to cope with the ‘wily coyotes’.

In 2003 the pair worked closely with the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association to build a predator proof fence

The 1. 5m high fence can hold around 300 ewes and lambs. Securing 26ha, it is made from wire, netting and steel posts. It is too high for coyotes to jump over and the ground is too hard for them to dig underneath. An electric wire running along the top acts as another deterrent, zapping any that try to jump it.

It is proving effective and hasn’t yet been breached.

Mark, however, doesn’t expect the success to last: “They haven’t learnt yet - but they will. ”

Another weapon in their artillery is the Phoenix wailer, a device that emits an ultrasonic sound along with a strobe light that deters the dogs. The downside is that it has to be in the line of sight of the coyotes to be truly effective, so any obstacle in the way prevents it from being much use.

Mark and Cherry have had to continuously adapt their technique as the coyotes adapt to each method.

For example, the coyotes that hunt in packs have begun luring dogs to the end of a field while their friends go in at the other and kill the sheep. To counter this, Mark and Cherry have had to start running their dogs in pairs or groups.

Both say that controlling them is a very tough job and they are forever trying to stay one step ahead of them.

“As fast as you’re developing a system to cope with them, they’re developing a system to cope with you!”.

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