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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

 On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 7:53 PM,  <paxamicus AT earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> An Anatolian will knock a coyote on it's tail. : )

The coyotes we have here would be a challenge for a single Anatolian.
They're big (and strong too -- I saw one with a 30-lb turkey clenced
in her teeth jump a 4-foot woven wire fence with plenty of clearance.
It was out of range (at least for me, who is no great shakes with a
rifle).

However, firearms aren't nearly as useful against critters as
Anatolians are. As you say, a fox can clean out the hen house while
you sleep -- and don't get me started on Mom Raccoon and her brood of
young, an example I once saw leaving the smorgasbord here at the House
of Joy when I came home one afternoon. You have an Anatolian, the
critters don't even bother.

In the whole time that I had Jim around to sharp shoot (some 20 years,
and the coyotes howled along the creek and in the woods about a
quarter mile from the pastures), he killed exactly one coyote because
that's all he ever saw on the property. (We were between dogs at that
time too.)

Anyway, it doesn't take a coyote, a simple little fox
> or a snake or a rat can make enough mess of a bird that she dies.

Not to mention hawks. A red-tail used to sit in the ash tree that
shaded the chicken pen and make her choices (when the guineas screamed
the chickens all ran into their enclosed small pen with net topping).


Marie