Ever seen a cow that a coyote won't eat ???

[Traveler]

Back about 5 weeks ago one of the neighbors lost a cow during calfing time.Both the cow and the calf was lost.I knew there was a pair of coyotes in the area raising pups, so I expected them to jump right on the food source.

Yesterday I went back to the dead cow and calf to see if the pair had staked claim to them.There was a pair of different size tracks both coming and going,but they had only worked on the calf and the cow.......well they had only eatin' the udders from her.I'd also found this pairs sign back about three weeks ago,so I know they've known about the cow and calf for awhile. Since I've never kept "track" of this sort of thing in years past,I can't honestly say if this is normal behavior or not.It has suprised me some that they hadn't opened the cow up from behind and been working on her on almost a daily bases.Naturally she's more than a little ripe now.Anybody ever noticed this sort of thing before ?

[Furhandler]

If the cow was under medication, they won't touch it.

Find out if it had any injections in the last month.

Also, open the gut up with a knife. It's helps!

[sbhooper]

They don't like cows that have been struck by lightning. When I was a kid on the ranch, I saw cows just melt away after being struck by lightning without being eaten at all.

[Danny Clifton]

What your talking about is why i dont believe the sick are eaten first. I've seen it a lot.

[bobwendt]

well, lot of misinformation here. medication, lightning, neither has any effect. In the heat of summer (lightning storms) feed is a plenty and cows rot to soup in hours, and thus coyotes don`t touch them. pups are mostly a week old now so no need for feed yet, ma won`t even eat for 3-4 days after whelping. Dead cows are a boon in the dead of winter ,and mostly just pee`d on and looked at any other time of year. Medication, heck if you drop the penicillin bottle they will eat that too, if they are hungry. baby rabbits/mice/fowl nests etc- all that stuff is priority over dead cows in the spring and summmer. Plus, density of coyoptes affects their aggresiveness on dead stock. one pair, they are probably butterballs by now and just picky.

[Zagman]

I have always had the same perception that it had to do with medication.

I assume, but do not know for sure, that a holstein in a big dairy operation back east (or anywhere, really) is "more medicated" than a angus heiffer running around the country side in Montana and brought in once a year........not sure though.

I have some great cow dumps on many of my farms and the new calfs and still-borns get slicked up quick.....

But a dead, full-grown holstein will go "virtually" untouched, even into the winter. Many of the farmers "bury" them half-heartily in the numerous, small gravel beds that most farms around here have, and the coyotes dig down to them, but do little once they get there.

In the fall, an unfound bowkill will be a slicked-up pile of bones overnight.....

Is it taste preferences, like the fact that coyotes love beaver carcass piles but won't touch the coons?

Or, with you guys feeding fox and coyotes and the noted likes and dislikes of the kept animals and how they gourge on one thing and scoff at the next?

Coyotes, being the ultimate opportunists and simply ignoring 1200# of black and white dead cow just does not add up to me.

I had an accident last year and this one is STILL out there, untouched!LOL



Zagman

[trappnman]

Great! now we will have to open another catagory in the pix contest....

Pigs get medicated quite a bit also- and I've never seen yet where a coyote will pass up a free pig dinner..yet have seen the same thing on cows also where coyotes don't touch them. They do however like to hang around them, so traps in the area are usually good sets.

[Danny Clifton]

I have seen cows that weren't ate in winter. I have never seen a dead horse last more than a few days. No matter the time of the year.

[pnwmtnmn]

I have seen where dairy or feedlot cattle are left alone until it rots into a skin around bones, even when right beside a well traveled coyote path, but that range cow that drops out on the range is nothing but scattered bones in a week.

Skunks that I put down with MEK aren't touched but the ones put down with other means are picked up fast.

It has to be the additives that go into the feed for the dairies and feedlots.

[Bubber]

Come to think of it, I have never seen a coyote eat on a dead cow. The birds start work on them pretty fast, but of all the dead claves that the niegboring dairy pitches onto the county land next to us go untouched. The deer get cleaned up fast, as well as any other dead stuff I throw out there. But a calf never gets touched. We had one that my uncle doctored a few years ago, aperently he gave it a tetnus shot instead of BoSe because the thing died of white muscle about two weeks later. Nothing touched that thing, not even birds. It just melted away.

[bobwendt]

believe it or not, beef is very very low on the list of preferred coyote feed, especially big beef. they just eat it only as a last resort when virtually all the good stuff( birds/rabbits etc) is used up first. I am positive medication has zero effect on carcase consumption, only time of year and relative need for feed. trapping more in the summer than the winter and caging and feeding thousands over the years has proven what I post here to be true, at least to me. They just like other stuff better, just that simple.

[trappincoyotes39]

It has to do with what is in a high supply in the area. If your in major cattle country there going to feed on dead calves and cows, they love after birth and depending on how the winter goes, will depend on how much feeding takes place. Mild winter, high prey base less receptive to carcasses, hard,cold deep snow and carcasses take on a whole new life!
I too beleive medication comes into play, I forget what they hit the cows in my area with but it does have an effect on carcass consumption, if 1080 could and was avoided, why not a systemic antibody as well? Tatse.smell who knows? I also have had horses laid untouched from spring till fall except for buzzards and such.
I just trapped a coyote off a cow/calf carcass last week, they where feeding heavy on the fresh kill, cow got stuck in the gumbo giving birth, calf half hangin out her back end, the majority of the calf was cleaned up, caught the big male first and then a big female shot from the plane, with 7 pups inside her 3 males 4 females 3-5 days from dropping them on the ground, I'm sure this pair was responsable for a fresh calf kill the week prior.
The point is timing of the year, this time of year there apt to feed on carcasses due to the need for calories and protein for the pups. Antelope become a favorite as they welp and the pups get some size on them, they will clean them up fast! Then you'll have lamb kills that go untouched just kill for the sake of the kill. Regional differances in likes and dislikes, on the food chain.
This past winter was very mild and carcasses went untouched for the most part except for antelope, they feed on the road kills I used quickly, even though the winter was mild. I thing age class and coyote density makes a differance as well, theif response if you will, high densitys and they want to get after it before the other takes the food from them. Lower coyote densitys mild weather, high rabbitt, rodent base less need or enthusiasum to feed from the carcass.

[Creek]

I agree with Zagman, Last winter I trapped near a Holstien feedlot. They were grown cows. They must have lost 10-12 cows and had drug them about 1/2 mile away down a small draw. I checked the cows about once a week to see if the coyotes had found them. December and January went by and not one cow was nibbled on. I was starting to think there were no coyotes left in the country to trap.

[bobwendt]

creek, in the country not too far from you they were near gone. I covered one heck of a lot of ground for 79 coyotes, what historically would have been good for 300-500 head. I had one feedlot dead pile(shown in my coyote video) that did 21 coyotes in 4 nights with 6 traps a year ago. This year I set up the same dead pile and got 1 decent coyote and 3 baldys in a week out of about 15 traps. After I pulled we got the big snow and the manager told me there was never a coyote track at the dead pile for a whole week before the snow melted. He had never seen that in 25 years there. snow for a week and nary even a track! That is about as gone as they can get. on 1080, it was only 1 in 10,000 that avoided the 1080 baits, not from any bad taste, only from fearing to eat anything dead. It basically exterminated all coyotes in the areas used, at least ones living there at the time. I don`t buy the medication deal for a minute. lay a fresh rabbit or beaver next to that dead pile and see it gone in a day or three, to prove my point they really just don`t care for beef. Remember when you were young and trolling the bars? First you tried the #1 ladys- bomb out and go to the #2`s , and so on and as last resort saddled up with a #10. Or if you were in an emergency state you just went for the #10 right off as it was a sure bet. Well, dead beef are #10`s on a coyotes list, simple as that.

[bobwendt]

p.s. , but you cked out every lady that went by, be she #1 or #10. A coyote is the same way with feed, sniffs it all even if a #10. might be interesting to find out all lures perform basically the same based on the above hypothesis. throw out the actual repel them rot gut, taker out the top 10% and I bet not a nichols worth of difference IN A FIELD SITUATION in all the rest.

[rionueces]

I have seen yotes ignore a dead cow before. Especially in the spring and summer when they have lots to eat. I see them eating rats and rabbits whole to get all of the fresh digestible nutrients that the innards provide. A rotten cow with tough hide just doesn't provide that. However, Winter time is a different story.

I haven't noticed any special preferences for medicated or non-medicated animals. They will eat just about anything if they are hungry in the winter or in drought conditions like we have every few years down here.

[bobwendt]

I notice my cage pee animals eat the innards of small game first, the longer they have been on big red meat the more desperate they are for muskrat guts. Plus like rionuces says they get calcium and various vitamins and minerals from eating up small boned animals and none of that in beef meat. Even when they do hit dead cows they hollow out the gut cavity first, starting at the butthole, the easiest entry thru 1/4" thick hide.

[Furhandler]

Bob W. : A friend of mine who uses cow for Black Bear baiting in the spring has witnessed the same with blacks over medication. Pile 10 cows in a heap and they'll dig out the none medicated one every time. He was telling me the other day that it's to the point he don't even pick up medicated dead cows anymore.

Have any explaination on why?

[bblwi]

I agree that medications would be a non factor in most meat eaters deciding to not eat certain sources. We have a fairly good dead animal disposal service here yet so very few large livestock carcass are left to rot or provide feed for scavangers. We have few yotes bothering large livestock. For two years I scattered my coon, mink, rat and fox carcasses on a field a farner was going to plow in November. Yotes all over those carcasses. We have yotes and fox go after the after births in pastures when cows calve but not the cows or the calves for the most part. There may be other products other then medications that some animals may shy away from. There could be some external parisite dips, sprays or rubs that they may not like, but there is so much medication in some of the animals that I can't see that being a concern or a hindrance. There is also so much food available for capable predetors that I think that they scavange as a choice not a need here in the east for the most part. Natural predetors may also instinctively know that offal and other parts may give them more bang with less digestive work, and it is us as humans who eat the lower value portions.

Bryce

Bryce

[Dusty]

We had a fairly sizable dead pile more often that I'd like to remember when I was growing up (part of the reason I ain't there any more!). Medication sure seemed to play a part. Get an unmedicated downer off the truck out there, and they'll walk over a pile of chronics to get to it. Sometimes they'll eat medicated cattle, sometimes they'll ignore not-medicated. Maybe it's the flavor of medicine - I never really noticed? My guess is, Bob's 1-10 theory works pretty well, and non-medicateds come in at about 9 1/2.