Coyotes take bite out of weaning ratio

These are some of the buck kids we weaned over the weekend. They are

10 weeks old and have had no supplementation — except plenty of

momma's milk. Unfortunately, coyotes took a lot of this kid crop.

Kidding season started out great at the last of February — lots of the commercial does having twins, all the moms were healthy and had plenty of milk. With just a few does having singles, I was shooting for a 175% kid crop. Then my big female dog had puppies, not in the pasture where the does and kids were, but under the barn near the Goat Rancher office. And that's where she stayed. That left one dog in the pasture to guard the goats.


It's my own fault that I let myself get down to two grown guardians. I've had as many as six Great Pyrenees guarding the various pastures. But as I let the goat herd get smaller, I also let my herd of dogs shrink. The number of goats may have been smaller, but the acreage they were roaming has grown, so I should have known a couple of dogs couldn't patrol 175 acres cut into numerous pastures.


By the time we weaned the little boys last weekend, the weaning average had dropped to 80%. In other words, coyotes had taken nearly half the kid crop. That also included at least three New Zealand Kiko bucklings and one NZ doeling. Conservatively, that was a $2,000 predation loss. Including a number of commercial kids adds another couple thousand dollars. In hindsight, I could have purchased and fed several more guardian dogs for what I lost in goats this year. I can promise these losses won't happen again.


I have my two grown dogs, one pup from last year, a male and female I recently purchased and four new puppies. That gives me a total of nine guardians. That should be enough!

Our young female Great Pyrenees had four nice

puppies. Bad thing is she had them during kidding

season.