Why Coyotes don't eat Cows

MCary

New member
Hi,

New to this board and reading through posts. Saw this one posted from way back without a very good answer.

Why don't Coyote eat dead cows?

Of course some do. But the most probable cause for those that don't is training and conditioning. Ranchers routinely take shots at every coyote they see. Coyotes as well as other predators (Lions in Africa for example) equate cows with humans and humans with death. They quickly learn that to prey on livestock can get them killed and they are capable of teaching that to thier young. This fear keeps them from eating even a dead cow.

I was born and raised on a 100,000 acre ranch in Montana and hold a degree in Biology. I have alot of experience with predation of livestock. Before I get jumped on for a percieved suggestion that coyote don't prey on livestock, I am only giving one possible explanation as to why SOME coyotes don't scavange livestock. We have lost enough calves to know others will.

Mike
 
MCary,
I give coyotes a lot of credit for smarts, but not THAT much credit. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif We have a lot of smart coyotes in Iowa, but the only time I see a dead cow make it very long without being eaten by coyotes is during hot months of summer. There is a lot of easy meals for coyotes during summer, and it seems they like fresh meat a lot better than the rotten stuff.
 
hello Mcary,
The carcasses that have not been eaten by coyotes or other scavengers are most likely animals that were sick and have been injected with oxytetracycline or other common antibiotic. For some reason the smell or taste of the antibiotics sometimes repels scavengers. This is of course just my opinion after seeing untreated dead cattle and how fast they willbe consumed right next to one that was doctored and not toutched.

bstan
 
Interesting stuff.

To put a spin on the original question. Why do coyotes turn to canibalism?

I have yet to see this activity in five hunting seasons of examining past bone piles. But this year I saw it twice. A female that was devoured in less than two weeks to a pile of hair that was drug several yards, and another female that was drug off over a weekend that I couldnt find.

Was it territorial? Hunger? Related to the sex of the animal?
 
Just a seperate question.

I have a feeling that B.Stanleys assessment is correct. Most dead cattle in the pasture that I see are fed on. But any I find in a pit are left alone. This tells me that the rancher was tending to the "pit" cattle prior to the death then disposed of.

But that sparked a question because one of the female yotes that I killed, the coyote(s) had to pass up the cow in the pit to get to the coyote to eat on and drag her off.
 
B. Stanley,

This subject has been covered before and it made me wonder once if the reason medicated cattle aren't scavenged is because of a past bad experience for the coyote. A lot of antibiotics are general in that they kill all bacteria that are susceptible to them. Have you ever had a Rx of antibiotics give you the worst case of diarrhea and stomach cramps? It's because the antibiotic kills all the useful bacteria, called microflora, in your GI tract. Those organisms are necessary for your body to break down non-protein food stuffs such as grains or vegetables. Until your body is able to replenish the microflora that has been wiped out, you have cramps and the screamin' meemies for a while. I've wondered if maybe a coyote that feeds upon a doped cow might not have the same experience and develop an aversion to dead beef. As a noted omnivore, they eat danged near everything and a lot of that stuf would require a healthy intestinal microflora. Just wondering/ thinking out loud.

Tommy, there have been recorded instances of cannibalism in coyotes, but I believe it was under only the worst of conditions. I, too, am curious as to what leads you to believe that you witnessed an incident of cannibalism? I wouldn't believe it unless I saw it for myself.
 
Lance H... you may very well be correct in your assessment concerning the antibiotics, and an adverse reaction to them.

A couple of local farmers asked me this past winter, why their dead cows were not being eaten. My guess was that it had to do with a mild winter, and the fact that prey species may have been easier to come by. I had not once considered the answer that you came up with, but it makes sense to me.
 
Coyotes (and fox) are omnivorous, whereas bobcats are strictly carnivorous. However, under extreme conditions (like starvation) all three have been documented as resorting to cannibalism. Very frequently coyote scat will be found to contain remains of bobcats and gray foxes, but this is normal predation.
 
I have seen a couple times that they ate a coyote or fox body that was skinned and left in a pile w/ coon, fox and coyote bodies. Usually the coons are ate and not the others. I was told the mangey ones hiding in hay stacks out west would eat the ones that were shot the day before, but then those must have been desperate. I too, have seen the cows or bulls untouched. I once saw the deer that were laying dead all over from blue tongue? Most of those were untouched. I thought there were too many for the low populations to eat up in that case T.20
 
We used to skin coyotes and put them out, and other coyotes would come and feed off them, which we also shot. We could see the coyotes eating the skinned ones. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
Barber, your story smells funny, lol. If there was, in fact, any truth that dead coyotes make GREAT bait for other coyotes don't you think the world would already know it???? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif
A deer gut pile- YES, a pile of coyote carcasses- c'mon, give us a break. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
In regard to the eating of dead cows.I own and operate a preconditioning operation for yearling cattle,and can give alot of credibility to the antibiotic theory.The coyote proof carcasses are those treated with the powerful broad spectram antibiotics like Nuflor,Batril,Naxel and Micotil.Deads after being treated with these drugs will be left to decompose.No carrion eaters will touch them.On the other hand,cattle that have been on a lower dose of a more mild antibiotic or an ionifor(bovatec,rumensin) will be consumed quickly.I agree with the thought of what these antibiotics will do to the stomach flora of what ever eats the carcass,but I think the behavior is the result of a tainted smell or taste brought on by the drugs.I was wondering though about the lightning struck cow.I have always been told that coyotes won't eat cattle killed by lightning.Last summer I had three healthy cattle killed bylightning and found this to be true.Do coyotes just like their meat rare or what?
 
I think there are quite a few hidden lessons in this post, we just have to sort them out... This is great!!!

So now I'll add my insight.

I started trapping this last season. I failed miserably. However, I've now doubled my trapline for next year, and am already anxious to get started. But this is a different story.

During my trapping. I watched a cow decompose with hardly anything eating on it. I was amazed. The conclusion I came up with, was that there were no coyotes in the area. After the smell subsided, I went and harvested the spine and ribs for some visual trap bait. I did not catch anything at the traps where I set those ribs. I wonder if the bones themselves are impregnated too!

After reading this, those bones are out of here!

Looks like this sick cow theory is true...
 
Nasa: Believe my story or not, it's true. This happined up in the Wenas area, next to the elk feeding station. I was staying on the place, trying to learn how to trap coyotes. Never did get good at it, either. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
I believe that there actually is truth in the antibiotic theory. There would be an odor in dead cattle which were treated with strong doses of antibiotic, which coyotes could easily detect with their sensitive nose. Coyotes learn real quick, most of us already know that. I do know of a few cows that were killed by lightning and were still eaten by coyotes though. Buzzards will eat ANY rotten meat, or at least it looks that way to me. I have a pretty strong belief that buzzards hunt by sight, and probably can't smell worth a hoot.
 
I think there may be something to the antibiotic thing as well.

I've also seen the same thing barber described.

Coyotes are weird critters. I think they get a really good laugh at humans that think they have a grasp on their habits. Some of the things they do are predictable. Most of the time though, just when you are certain you have them figured out they will prove you wrong.

I've seen coyotes leave a carcass untouched that was in an area with no pressure and no shooting at them. This place had a high coyote population. No antibiotics administered to the cow. Birds ate on it but no coyotes took a bite.

This winter I saw several instances where coyotes in very high pressure areas (high pressure meaning people were driving the roads daily taking pot-shots at anything that resembled a coyote, no matter what the distance) would feed on a carcass near the road. It might be 11am or 2pm. Distances from the road were 150 to 300 yards.

I have about 15 minutes of video tape of a coyote this late winter feeding on a cow about 2pm in a wide open pasture. I was surprised because the land was owned by ranchers that shoot (at) any coyote on sight in addition to the heavy road-hunting taking place. The coyote didn't have a care in the world. I was standing outside my truck filming with my scent blowing right to him. He would look at me every once in awhile and resume tugging chunks off the carcass in between warding off the eagles and crows surrounding the cow.

Regarding coyote cannibalism, I have seem it many times. It doesn't happen often but it is not as rare as some think. People have actually claimed a coyote would never touch a coyote carcass. I've seen skinned and unskinned coyotes being eaten by coyotes. I had a spot on our ranch where I dumped coyotes and would occasionally catch coyotes feeding on a carcass.

One early fall several years back, as fast as I could bring a carcass, they would polish them off during the night. It got to the point where all the scat around the site was filled with coyote hair and the only tracks were coyote.

In contrast I've seen a couple piles containing 80+ skinned carcasses between the two, that my father in-law took from a plane, remain untouched. Never a sign of a coyote taking a bite off either of these piles.

I could drone on and on with examples of different types of contradicting behavior. Coyotes do whatever they want, when they want, logic be damned. They don't seem to care what a book says they should do. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

I'm sure no coyote expert but I've yet to meet one either. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Good hunting

(edited for spelling)
 
Rich,

Turkey vultures (buzzards) do, in fact, have a keen sense of smell. In fact, they're one of the few families of birds that have anything more than the most rudimentary olfactory lobe in their noggins. During my four years doing research on birds of prey, we kept a couple vultures around for housekeeping. Because we fed our birds wild meat, mostly wild jackrabbits that had been killed in training racing greyhounds, and we preferrd to keep our cages as "wild" as possible for rehabilitating birds, we always had the problem of a bird getting hold of a piece of tainted meat. All it took was finding one golden eagle in the late stages of Type C botulism poisoning to tell us we needed a better way of cleaning cages. as luck would have it, we had these two non-releasable vultures that no zoo wanted. We'd stick the cleaning crew inside a cage and in a day, they'd find every piece of meat, no matter how small or how tall the grass.

But, I wanna go back to the antibiotic theory and amend my earlier post. Last night, while reading this thread, I recalled an incident a bunch of years ago when I was new to training hounds. We were working a track through a large canyon when I spotted eyes a hundred yards in fron to f the dogs. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a coon in the shallows. My dog was tracking immediately downwind of the coon where he passed within ten feet of it, yet didn't locate on it at all. I watched the coon and it had a notable stagger to its gait and it turned out to be sick with distemper. The ol' man I hunted with called in the dogs and when I asked him why they didn't strike on that coon, he told me he's never seen a good hound strike a sick coon before ( a good thing, huh?). Maybe the antibiotics do, in fact, emit a distinct odor that turns the predators and scavengers away. I know that when one of my kids is on them and gets all sweaty from running around, they stink like all hell. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I'm guessing that the flora bacteria may have to be "regrown" in the coyotes intestines, that process I dont understand. But wouldnt eating on the carcass supply essential bacteria to counteract the antibiotics? Id think that a rank carcass would be a sesspool of bacteria.

Does the coyote have a system to kill all of the bacteria that they consume? If they do it must be a strong natural anitbiotic.
 
I have several farmers who give me their dead newborn calves to use for bait. They usually don't last long before the yotes clean them up. I've tried using young calves that the farmer had "doctored" but the coyotes or anything else for that matter wouldn't touch them. Even the buzzards wouldn't eat them. kyray.
 
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