was killed last night, and I could use some advise. (Warning, there are some gross photos ahead.)

After the peacock was killed, I had been trying to lock the barn up at night.  But when we were away that didn’t happen.  Yesterday I had even been commenting about how gorgeous the turkey was.  Last evening I did go out to the barn to give some chick starter to the new chicks that Tom had run out and bought.  I thought about locking the barn up, but the animals were still outside, and it wasn’t dark yet.  Then I was exhausted and fell asleep on the couch.  When I woke up, I decided not to go out and lock the barn up as the animal had been fine while we were away.  Big mistake.

This morning, going out early to do the chores I found this.

And then I followed the path of feathers and found this.

His breast had been eaten but nothing else.  Then I started looking around to see if I could find more evidence about what had killed him.  I thought, for sure, that there would be tracks in the mud.  I couldn’t find any and then after a while, near a spot of blood near the feed shed I found this.

There appears to be a relatively small dog foot print at the top of the photo.  And then I found another print near the edge of the mat nearby.

Our beagle periodically will break into this area but hasn’t in a while.  And with our torrential rain yesterday, I feel these are very recent prints.  But I am guessing there is a single coyote involved.  What do you think?

I hadn’t noticed any other carnage and thought that I had counted three turkey hens.  But later in the morning, when the light was better, I couldn’t find the brown one.  And the white one (her sister) is acting oddly, calling out a lot.  So I am thinking that we have another missing turkey.  I am hoping that she was just frightened off and is hiding.  I looked around the property for her and can’t find her.  There was signs of a big struggle in the barn with a tipped over water bucket and disturbed ladder.  It must have been terrifying for all.  The majority of the poultry are hanging out on the goat side of the barn, where it didn’t happen, which is unusual.  I think they are all a little freaked out

Then I had to figure out what to do to protect them better until we can find a solution.  I could lock the poultry in the barn all of the time, but that would leave the sheep and geese outside.  And whatever killed this large turkey could certainly kill a goose and maybe an older sheep too.  Here are some of these animals I am trying to save (with the pile of turkey feathers in the middle of the pasture).

After thinking of different options, I decided to lock the poultry in on the sheep side of the barn and put the donkeys in the pasture with the sheep and geese.  I bought them as guard donkeys, but they got too fat on pasture with the sheep, and later Marty killed a goat kid and a lamb.  These animals had broken into the donkey pen.  So I am thinking with adult animals and the donkeys being moved into their pasture, Marty would be less aggressive.  Plus he is a lot older and hopefully mature.  This pasture is well eaten down by the sheep now so I am not too worried about the donkeys getting sick from too much grass.  Now the peacock had been killed in the donkey pen so I am not too optimistic that they will avert an attack.  And they hid when a cougar was in their pen, stalking our calf.  But they did attack some neighbor dogs that had come down to attack our animals.  So they might deter an attack or at least let us know that something awry is happening.  I will still try to pen the animals up at night.  And will need to open up the barn to the donkeys if the weather is nasty as there is no other suitable shelter at this point in that pasture.  I may be able to resurrect the hay barn to make it acceptable, but not today.  Does this sound like a reasonable temporary plan to keep the animals safe?

Earlier the game camera had picked up a coyote in our back fence line.  So I was assuming it was the same coyote that had come in from the back of the property.  Unfortunately the game camera’s batteries died on March 19 so we do not have any evidence there. And there is nothing obvious back there.  We know there are a lot of coyotes on the properties to the south and east of us so it definitely could have come in from there.  I was thinking that Tom could go hunting out back, but that may not be the issue.  We are not seeing any obvious breech in our fencing, but it doesn’t take much for a coyote.  Any suggestions for removing this threat would be appreciated.  Tom moved the game camera to the front fence line to see if we can catch anything there.  This was a brazen attack so I figure it will continue until we find a solution.

In better news, I heard Mr. Pink crow for the first time.  He was been the lowest on the rooster pecking order since he came here from Denise.  It was worse before we butchered a bunch of roosters.  We have only 3 others left, but he still was acting the coward.  But today he seemed more comfortable.  I hope it continues.  He is a nice rooster and would make nice babies.

I had to rush with my coyote proofing solutions as I had a scheduled zoom at 10:00 and had to prep for it.  It was a Bake with a Legend class, Ian’s Easter Carrot Cake.  This is what it is supposed to look like.

And this is what mine looked like.

It is not pretty (actually a mess) but hopefully it will taste good.

Any suggestions for our predation issue would be appreciated.  I had a pet tom turkey here for years and never had a problem.  But that was then, and this is now.  I need to find a good solution before we lose any more beloved animals.  Here is my old tom in better times (2009).

And the tom I just lost (photo from March 16).

He will be missed.  I hope that we can hatch and raise his offspring anyway.