I am a little worried. It is getting warm around here and I like to keep my horses outside at night. I have a yearling, a medium riding pony and three horses. So far everything was fine, but lately some of my friends mentioned that coyotes might harm the horses… So what should I do???
Highly unlikely. Unless you have minis but even then more than likely not a problem. With my foals I do keep them in at night usually until they are 3-4 months old so big enough to not be coyote food. My filly at 4 months weighs in at almost 500 lbs, a bit much for little coyotes.
ok, great, I hope that nobody here has any bad experiences with coyotes… I was a little worried about the yearling, although it is quite a big yearling.
Short answer: No.
Another “no”!
Nope. Really, where I live the only animal that will is a domestic dog or a cougar. And cougar attacks are incredibly rare. Dogs? Not that rare, sadly. Coyotes regularly trot through my pastures, hunting mice. Horses don’t even bat an eye.
Nope! We had coyotes around where I used to live, and they would kill/eat the feral cats people dropped off at the barn, but never bothered the horses.
Coyotes don’t kill horses. A PACK of coyotes could conceivably kill a new foal, but that is not likely to happen.
Many years ago I lived in an area where coyotes did run in “packs” at night.
Most everyone in the area had horses and no one, had any horses or foals lost to coyotes.
Some nights we could hear them close (many of them) and my father would go outside and shoot an air rifle to scare them off more to shut them up, than worry over the horses. Don’t worry.
Any mare with a foal is more than a match for a coyote. Any horse larger than a new foal is safe.
As others have said, the biggest threat are feral dogs, or even worse, the beloved puppy-kins of the citiots, who move to the city, let the dogs loose to harass wildlife, and livestock, and then refuse to believe their dog is a problem.
It would be very rare, although there was an incident in Maple Ridge a couple of years ago…a bigger problem is a pack of coy-dogs which are bigger.
A coyote is really not very big and we usually see them singly or in pairs.
We have two dens near us and they have been there for years, never herd of a problem except with sheep. The ambulances or fire engines set them off howling, quite beautiful.
In my neck of the woods, coyotes can get pretty big (my dad has killed one that weighed over 60lbs), but they don’t typically mess with horses. Never messed with my mini. I would be more concerned about a pack of dogs. My uncle had a small pack haul one of his calves out of a paddock. It was horrible.
No problems in the past 6 years and we have had 2 foals on the property. Our coyotes are regularly in our fields and are quite large.
No, you’re more likely to have trouble with loose dogs than coyotes. Coyotes are not known to hunt in packs and tend to focus on smaller prey. The same cannot be said for loose dogs.
No nope nope - I have seen horses CHASE coyotes - but never have seen coyotes chase a horse.
We have many of them around here - if I trail ride in the back hills I will see a few every time out. Never a concern at ALL with the horses. Cats - maybe, horses, no way.
I generally agree with all of the comments in my experience.
But I would not say;
“Any mare with a foal is more than a match for a coyote. Any horse larger than a new foal is safe”.
Nor;
“Coyotes are not known to hunt in packs”
I am not an expert on them but have been around them in different parts of the country. It seemed to me their behavior depends on geographic location. They are basically scavengers and opportunist from what I have seen and been taught. And very smart.
They will always go for “easy pickings”. But the definition of “easy pickings” will be defined by geographic location where they were born, raised and taught how to find food.
I saw a pack bring down a large elk in a meadow up in the foothills outside Boulder Co years ago. Coyotes are "chicken s**t hunters or smart hunters depending on how you look at it. They will not by and large take a chance of getting hurt in the process.
When it comes to large prey, because that’s all there is, they will chase and maim a selected one. Usually the smaller or weaker looking one. I am told they study and pick their “spots” carefully. As the prey is being chased one will dodge in and take a bite. Usually at a male’s testicles which are easy to get at. Painful and will bleed profusely.
Once wounded they will continue to chase until the animal is sufficiently weakened to take down with little to no effort.
I doubt they would go after a penned horse. Maybe if it was the only one in the paddock and it/they were desperate. No room to move around and manipulate to its, their advantage.
They will go after something at any time of day. I had a cabin in the foothills of Co. Let my Jack Russell out one mid morning. Not long after I went out to find him all bloody with a bunch of puncture/bite wounds on his body, mostly his belly. Saw a coyote running off and didn’t hear a thing. So quick my guy didn’t have time to make a sound.
A couple of weeks and an expensive vet bill later he was fine.
There were always signs posted on the telephone poles when flat landers moved to the foothills. Lost dog, cat, etc. Coyotes or mountain lions got them.
My two have always lived in coyote country. The road next to one of the places I boarded was even called Coyote Creek. However, there have never been any incidences of horses vs. coyotes, even if it was an older or lame horse in a layup pen.
My mule was born in a pasture in the wee hours of the morning and while I’m pretty sure coyotes were later the lucky recipients of the placenta, that’s the only encounter with the new born they had.
My mule is everyone’s favorite at the place I currently board him because he will happily chase any coyote that dares make its way into the pasture. If he were to somehow corner it, I would for sure put my money on my mule!
OP, by any chance are your friends non-horse people?
OP - I think your horse will be safe.
But as an aside… I was riding my mare last week when I heard my dog (50lb aussie) scream. I look up and my dog is running with a coyote straddling her with its front paws. I start screaming, and it distraced the coyote enough to look up, and my dog ran off. I (still on horseback) chased the coyote into the woods. I turn to ride back to my dog and the coyote came out of the woods running towards my mare. We ran the coyote off to the far side of my pasture. It stayed in the woods til I got to my dog and we were about 100 yards away. Then it started following us again, but stopped at the top of the hill and watched me for several more minutes before walking off.
I think it was a Mama coyote who was trying to protect her den. Pure conjecture… but my dog didn’t have any bite marks. Nedless to say, it was terrifying.
All right, I’ll tell my coyote story.
One of my herds is in a field a ways away from the barn/house – about a five minute walk deep into the heart of 500 acres. (In other words, far from civilization!) Sometimes I feed the horses at dusk, and I’ve heard the coyotes howling. I wondered what would happen if a coyote, or a bear turned up in the field with me and the horses. I figured, being prey animals, the horses would take off, leaving slow old me as easy pickings.
This was what I thought. One day, a large coyote DID turn up in the field as I was feeding. He was about the size of a German Shepherd, and was walking towards me and the horses. My dogs went nuts barking, and, to my surprise, far from running away, the horses drew themselves up to look as big as possible and walked very deliberately towards the coyote. The coyote, who took one look at the advancing herd, and RAN!
Yay horses!
Btw,in the north east, coyotes definitely hunt in packs (I believe not so much in the west). In the north east, they’ve also interbred with wolves and so are bigger than western coyotes. All that said, they are no threat to horses.
SMF, in the northeast, the coyotes aren’t coyotes, they are coywolves, a cross between a coyote and an eastern wolf. They tend to pack up more than coyotes will, coyotes tend to be solitary or in pairs. The coywolves are larger and might take a newborn something, but still have coyotes behaviour. Their packs aren’t large, but they do pack up because of the wolf part, from what I have heard.
Not around here. We have had a cougar kill a llama, though.
