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["Richard Wagner" <rewagner@centurytel.net>]

We lost a Khaki duck to a pair of bobcats. A couple of days after it disappeared my neighbor showed me a photo from his trail camera of the two cats and my wife’s ‘egg’ duck.  Aside from that the only adults we lost were to our own dogs. I went through three dogs before I found a pair that leave the ducks alone. I destroyed two more dogs for killing my baby goats. I also shot one stray dog, part of a three dog pack, that killed a valuable registered heifer calf.  Now we have coyotes around here. We frequently hear them at night and occasionally see them in the daytime but so far I have not been able to pin, with certainty, any stock loss on them. I don’t doubt that they take animals occasionally but from my experience one should start looking closer to the back door for the culprits. House cats are equally destructive. Domesticated animals have the advantage of being well fed, and receiving health care and shelter while lots of wild animals will be sickly and die prematurely of disease or malnutrition while Fido and Kitty are being subsidized.