The Secret to Countering Coyotes...DONKEYS!

It used to be when I go out and and ride a pasture in the summer It was nothing for me to see a coyote while I was out riding the pasture, and now I don't even see the coyotes anymore While I'm riding. It's just the pressure from the donkey keeps the coyote out of the pastures Grant and Don bright crates run Stoney Creek farm near Redwood Falls with a graze cattle hogs and chickens in pastures Coyotes are thick in southwest, Minnesota And although a predator has attacked only one of their calves to be proactive. They brought in a donkey patrol eight years ago. I Got the idea from a good friend of ours that they farm and ranch three hours north of here and they've dealt with the timber wolf for about 30 years already in the region they live in and they decided to combat the timber wolf with a natural way and What they found was the donkeys and they just brought that they just saw these donkeys were on a sale and went and bought them and brought him home and started picking through them watching the donkeys how they behaved and how they acted and and decided to Sort through the ones that they thought were the best and kept them for their operation to help with the timber wolf Here obviously we're not dealing with the timber wolf yet, but we have cats We have mountain lions roaming through here on and off and we obviously have the coyotes stick his hair on a dog around here We first got three donkeys and we unloaded them. They were in that yard over there and we had two two yard dogs at the time one of them was pretty aggressive predator control and The dogs had not seen the donkeys yet And all of a sudden the dogs could see those ears those big pointy ears sticking up and and the dogs Immediately thought there was something wrong in the yard and they started barking and running towards that yard Those donkeys all three of them lined up knows the tail knows the tail knows the tail Across that yard fence. There was no way those dogs were gonna come into that pen. He thought our dogs Figured they were gonna be dead Grant and Don practice rotational grazing their pastures are divided into paddocks and cattle are moved from one to another Chickens are rotated in three to ten days after the cattle this last year We had issues with a coyote with chickens, but it was also our first year of chickens So we'll we will use the donkey every place We think we need it to protect our livestock We've been blessed to have friends that that full a few donkeys every year So we've been buying yearlings from them for a couple hundred bucks a head We've paid less for a donkey than you would for a good guard dog I mean, I've seen him chase a napkin tumbling across the pasture because there's just such a curious animal They want to know what it is that's in their environment and obviously if they don't like it They run it out of their environment the bright crites own six donkeys One stays with each of the six groups of cattle that are rotated But when cows are calving donkeys have to stay outside the fence those cows Get really Defensive and aggressive and aggressive to anything that's not supposed to be out there This is the only donkey that we have tamed. This is the largest one. I think she's a mammoth donkey but Don tamed this one with the hopes that having one tame one would help with moving cattle Because donkeys are donkeys. They are stubborn stubborn animals and And it works to have her Tame and trained it helps with moving them if we want if we want the donkeys to move We'll try to get them to move away from us. My own personal feeling is if we keep them wild They'll act more like they should in nature and be a more aggressive predator control And I'm not saying that taming this one made her less aggressive We've had instances where all those, you know, they'll break through the fence or something. The cattle will get out And she has disappeared for three four days. She's just off in the she'll go off in the woods all by herself And we couldn't find her and pretty soon All of a sudden she shows up comes back with the cattle But the ones that aren't tamed they're usually always right with the cows always with them Don and Grant discovered that their 30 year old donkey named Jenny is drawn to the reflective lens of a camera She has scared a cameraman to death You can see how she'll nuzzle up to dawn Donkey kisses. A guy was interviewing me in the middle of the pasture and it happened to be the pasture. She was in She went around and and said hi to the other people that were in the group and then she walked right up behind the cameraman Just put her head over His shoulder and put her lips right on his face and he immediately froze And looked at me and said am I about to die? And I said no you'll be okay Brian the people that have seen those that video When they come and visit they want to see Jenny's a donkey. She's kind of got her own following She's a big donkey and a donkey's feet are like lightning strikes You can you can watch a cow kick you you'll never see a donkey kick you until it's done. They have strong jaws and Really accurate feet they can run fast. I've ridden beside him on the four-wheeler 35 40 miles an hour We have no idea what the donkeys do at night. I mean there's times In the middle of summer you get in from work and late and you're walking across the yard and it sounds like Jurassic Park out in these pastures. It is so loud So that tells me that the donkeys are upset by something and then it's just chaos out there at night And yet we don't hear our cattle bellaring We don't hear calves bellaring everything stays calm the friends that we got these from they do a lot of stuff horseback and They were pushing cattle through some brush and came out and there was a donkey standing there and they had a hundred and sixty pound Dog that got too close to the donkey a donkey grabbed it flipped it up in the air kicked it over Her head mounted on her horse. So that's when we hear all that noise at night That's about the only thing that any of us can imagine is going on The Breitkreutz don't know what predators mother nature may send their way in the future There could be more mountain lions bobcats even timberwolves, but they'll be no match for the cute but fierce donkey patrol