Mountain lion wipes out farm's petting zoo (AZ)

Arizona Daily Star ^ | July 5, 2009 | Tim Steller

[magslinger]

The owner said he hasn't lost any of them yet, but a bear and bobcat has been spotted in the area.

Bobcats wouldn't be very much of a threat to adult alpaca. They are just too far over their weight class. A bob' might take a young alpaca, but only if no adults were nearby. An alpaca stomped bobcat wouldn't be a threat to a newborn mouse.

Bears aren't really that efficient as predators. Chasing down and killing large animals isn't their thing. If I saw a bear feeding on an alpaca, my first thought is that it was injured or killed by misadventure or another predator rather than taken by the bear.

I'd be more inclined to worry about coyotes, if I were that alpaca herder. I don't know if there are coyotes in that area, but that is the way to bet. Coyotes are amazingly comfortable around humans. They have been seen in some very urban settings.

[hiredhand]

Here's my shepherd. :-)

[familyop]

That .44 is downright beautiful.

If you carry revolvers that use cartridges, the following are nice and well made.

http://www.triplek.com/Products/id/38/grp/10/sg/1/

Go to the holster page, and you’ll see that some of the holsters are made to fit particular revolvers like the more contemporary duty holsters. ...maybe a little safer and more practical while retaining historical appearances.

Some women here like the drop holsters, because they ride more accessibly. Straight holsters ride way high on them. Those rigs kinda grew on me, too (slim here, for an older fellow, so the belt doesn’t get pushed down).

[familyop]

"Here's my shepherd. :-)"

She looks comfortable in that photo. That's good. So many other women in photos and videos on the Net lean back too far. Maybe rifle/shotgun training is a good prerequisite for pistol/revolver training.

I teach fairly straight but fairly relaxed posture. ...will get some photos after our next range day. ...great backdrops and isolation on our own place. Some of the neighbors use those, too (rancher neighbor, his cowboys and recent refugee neighbors from suburbs way down in the cities).

[familyop]

"I read the article source to my daughter a moment ago. She's our primary herdsman here, and the whole notion of doing anything other than shooting predators like this on sight is just stupid beyond belief. :-)"

You have sheep, so you even have to shoot stray dogs on sight. Most other readers won't know that sheep will bunch-up in the corner of an outbuilding from the mere sight of a dog (other than your sheep dogs). Sheep have been crushed to asphyxiation from that kind of threat. And mountain lions seem to have gone after sheep more than other kinds of livestock. They've only been seen stalking around cattle up here at night, as far as neighbors have reported to us to date. ...hard to tell, though, as dead cattle were most often assumed to have been killed by coyotes.

Each day after an elk herd comes through, their are several large elk hooves and leg bones here and there. ...saw a few big cat tracks a time or two.

[dfwgator]

One of those “Circle of Life” kind of things.

[familyop]

Is your shepherd a redhead, BTW? All of mine are. ;-)

[wazoo1031]

I’m an animal lover, and yes, this is awful but the headline had me laughing my ass off! Predators are meat eaters and they hunt...a petting zoo is a just a buffet to a big cat...Welcome to the food chain, folks!

[hiredhand]

She's very comfortable! I've got three of the "critters"...all mid to late teens now and I started them off when they were about six...she's in the middle...16 now. I've got an AR carbine and she out-shoots me with her rifle, which is full sized. I "think" I could have beaten her yesterday but we only brought my rifle. Next time we go out, I'll see if I can win. :-) I've seen her run out the back door before with that rifle and a spare mag in her back pocket because of a commotion in her goat pasture!...so far, it's been nothing serious...thankfully. :-)

I'd like to see some photos! Ping me when you post them...please. :-)

[hiredhand]

Sheep are VERY different from goats! I had no idea how different! I say they're dumb, but my daughter says they're not quiet so stupid, but just different. The sheep DO act differently around her than anybody else. Also, I'm quite certain that if not for the herd dogs, we would have lost some to stray dogs and/or Coyotes. The Pyrenees have been GREAT! They let us know when the sheep were lambing during the lambing season! We didn't lose ANY babies this year!

You're right about strays though. If they don't come when called with their tails wagging (so we can crate them and call animal control), we simply shoot them....bury them...and shut up about it. People think we're harsh, but dogs change personalities completely when they're around small livestock. I've seen it happen, and my daughter has a lot of money invested in pedigreed breedstock. People think they're just goats, and in a sense they are. I have a neighbor who had some big dogs that kept escaping and going to just outside our goat pens before we had the herd dogs. I tried to tell him the whole notion of dogs changing personality around small livestock and he simply refused to believe me. So I simply told him that as much as I hated to, I would shoot the dog...and IF it killed one before I could shoot it, then he could pay us for it, and some of her does and bucks are $500.00+. Amazingly, those dogs stayed locked up after that! ...which suited me fine. I really do NOT want to shoot a neighbor's dog.

Sheep are strange...generally, they hang out with each other and not usually with the goats. The goats can be on one side of the property and the sheep on the other! The goats will NEVER be spread out like that! Generally, they stay together! Also, sheep are very, VERY panicky. Much more so than goats. They also look at you with that "blank" look....like there's not much ticking between their ears. When a goat looks at you, you get the impression that the goat is thinking about something. Yeah...sheep are different!

[hiredhand]

Good Lord YES!... she's a redhead! :-) ...it goes more to a strawberry blond if she spends too much time in the sun. Her older brother has copper colored red hair though. My mother is a redhead. I'm not, nor are any of my brothers, but two of my kids are! She's got the attitude to go along with it too! But she's turned into a fantastic young woman, and is a true friend of mine... she's the other woman in my life. :-)

[Publius6961]

At first Stewart Loew was excited by the sight: a mountain lion on the family's farm near Amado.

This genius is too dumb to run anything more complicated than a petting zoo.

What is is about the concept of predator and prey that is beyond the comprehension of a second-grader?

Stewart thought maybe the mountain lion was using food stamps? Hydrogen and stupidity; the most abundant things in the universe.

[familyop]

"I'd like to see some photos! Ping me when you post them...please. :-)"

Sure! We'll take them during the next few days and probably get down to the city for developing and scanning in less than a month. [Hey, our old, analog camera is a good one!] We already bought film to get new pictures for relatives and friends. We're in a valley on the Rockies, so there'll be scenery, too.

[familyop]

Yeah, we have one the same age. It seems that they become daddies’ girls even more at that age. The first time she fired a shotgun, she giggled and fired another load. I’m the only one of us four who’s not a redhead.

I’ve had neighbors who had sheep and learned a few things from them. ...fascinating animals. It seems that they require much more work than most other livestock. With calves, you give them shots, get them weaned, and they’re pretty much on their way to the sale in a year. Sheep require a whole lot of watching. Raise dogs or llamas with them, though, and that really helps.

The soil here hasn’t been taken care of for so long, that it needs to be replenished and held together with better roots. So we’re building goat fence around a quarter-mile section and will use a herd of goats to get rid of the weeds and help with fertilization. ...probably take until next summer to build the fence, with all of the other stuff that has to be done. Hopefully, they’ll like sage. We’ll put the kids in pens and on something sweeter to eat a month or two before barbeques. ;-)

We’ll fertilize extra and test some hays along the way. ...looks like candidates for hay here are various rough, tough, dry land wheat hays and winter grass roughages.

My wild guess is that we’ll see wetter weather for about the next six years, if the coming solar max is lower than the last as predicted by the NASA folks. Some areas 100 miles or so to the south and in lower elevations will probably stay dry. We’ll plant hays in patches in low spots around the first of next May, start measuring growth rates, and so on.

[hiredhand]

I’m looking forward to seeing them. Thanks! :-)

[girlangler]

You have the right idea flycatcher.

How are you? And how did the new jobs go?

I have been busy with Mom sick, but have been scanning FR. I was glad to find this ping. Been wondering how your work is going. Keep me up on all the adventures you’ve encountered, as I love to hear them. I may not answer quickly (been running Mom to radiation and chemo treatments) but I will read and enjoy.

[RichInOC]

You see a petting zoo. Kitty sees a buffet.

No! Bad kitty!

[patton]

Wasn’t a rant - it was pretty well said!

[jazusamo]

Continued prayers for your Mom’s full recovery and you, Girl. I think of y’all often. :-)

[jazusamo]

Bad kitty is right, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. :)