Homesteading and Hobby Farm/Ranch

From my experience: predators are going to be your biggest problem and headache. I finally got rid of my poultry because if I forgot to put them up at night, some would get taken. Some would still get taken in broad day light. Make your coop in a way where your birds won't roost next to the wire or critters will kill them through the wire too.

Forget all about Alpaca as a guard. a Llama might do something vs. dogs/coyotes but not much else. A donkey has a very good chance of turning on your own animals and being too rough with them, even killing them (especially new animals and new babies). I had a donkey, and have a llama now. My opinion is a livestock guardian dog is the way to go, but then you have a dog you need to feed everyday or cause issues with the neighbors, so you have to pick your poison. I dont have a guard dog and just have to accept a higher rate of loss.

about goats: the breed they call myotonic or fainting goats are in my opinion the easiest to contain and take care of. They are not escape artists and dont climb or jump well. These are what I have and I've never had one escape in 10 years, even when using just three foot electro netting.

Black Vultures will swarm newborn kids and reduce them to bones if they are born in the wrong place at the wrong time. some even tore open the backside of the nanny trying to get the placenta or kid or who knows (I came too late) and she had to be put down. This might of been one of those other instances where a guard dog would of been better than my old donkey or my Llama. /shrug

I'm trying to tell you things that I learned the hard way and saw with my own eyes. The basic stuff you will read about like you said on youtube or whatever.

Screamfeeder said:

Best advice I can give you is do not listen to ANYONE here.

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Then you go on to tell him to trust in fences. He is going to learn real quick fences are only good for keeping stock in. You will never keep predators out. Ever.

Screamfeeder said:

Don't be contentious bro. Fences CAN keep a good amount of predators out and this is coming from a guy that has had to shoot his fair amount of coyotes. You have a 3' sunk modular tube fence with wire up to 4' high and you check for digging every week and you can be damn sure only the most starving of coyotes is getting in. Again, this is location dependent. You mentioned black vultures but where he lives, that isn't even a concern so why bother for it? Might as well give him advice about Hyena protection.

If you kept reading you would see that I said he was going to lose stock no matter what. It's a fact of having a farm/ranch. Having a damn good fence and a safe place for stock to be in at night is a good thing and going to be your primary defense against the elements and predators.

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The black vulture was more a example of how things can come out of nowhere and surprise you, things that you never even hear about on the internet. Four foot fence, hell six or eight foot fence won't stop bobcat which are a lot more common then people realize and what I attribute most of my loses over the years to, not coyote. Bobcats can and will attack during the day too and i've found them feeding on adult goats and even had one kill a half grown emu once.

another point I want to bring up that I touched on when I said I got rid of chickens because of having to constantly lock them up (which is your suggestion as the first line of defense). Yes penning up animals in buildings will keep them safe at night (mostly) but it gets to be a hell of a chore and what you once thought was your hobby farm becomes a chain and anchor. Also I have a personal philosophy of only keeping animals in good conditions (my opinion) so I won't keep chickens if I have to keep them locked up 24/7. I have 20 acres in Florida by the way and I suppose you could say i've been doing what kilroy wants to do these past 10 years or so.

Not discounting the use of a good fence. My perimeter fence is 4 foot bekaert no-climb horse fence with a strand of barb wire on top and a strand just below ground level. I keep my ratites (ostriches/rhea/emu) behind the 5 foot version with extra three strands of barb wire on top making it a six foot fence. It helps, especially vs. dogs. With coyotes its a constant battle to fill in holes all along the perimeter that armadillos, possums, raccoons, gopher tortoises start, and coyotes enlarge. For the bobcats, the fence may as well not exist. We get the occasional migrant Puma in the area, but so far they are too rare. Ditto for black bear in my area. I know the coyotes are everywhere because of the tracks, why they don't attack more is beyond me. I can only say MAYBE the Llama is doing something to discourage them either actively or passively no proof though.

I put a few very old nannies in one of the six foot emu fenced pens in the last month and one had some babies. Bobcat grabbed one by the throat in broad daylight but dropped it and ran off when I just happened to go back there. It survived with antibiotics and moving them into the enclosed barn for now. Very lucky little kid.

I'd say I lose on average one goat/goat kid 3 or 4 months on average. Yes that sounds low and I think its a combination of fence/llama/open barn for the animals to sleep in (door stays open though) and vigilance in keeping the perimeter sealed best I can. Oh, and removing brush from the areas the goats can't get to helps keep the bobcats from taking opportunities. The emu/ostrich pens are very overgrown and tree covered, which is why I wanted to put some nannies in there to clear them, and the local bobcats saw their opportunity in there and took it.

I also learned the very hard way to try and put the goats into the barn either to give birth or as soon as I notice they have given birth. If a goat goes into labor under the open sky in the day, the vultures come on down.