Here's more information about something I mentioned early, taste aversion. It's hard for me to understand why there isn't more interest in this approach. It seems to me like it is a low cost and effective way to minimize predation on livestock.
A quick review; you take pieces of whatever livestock you want to protect and use it as bait. It doesn't need to be from your stock, just the same species. You inject it with an odorless, tasteless compound that will make the predator sick shortly after eating the bait. The predator pukes it's guts out and learns that this prey is bad. It then teaches it's offspring to avoid that prey.
My girl Cindy told me about this when I brought up coyote control. She recalled a video that she had seen about a taste aversion experiment. The video was related to wolves that had been conditioned this way with mutton. After the wolves had been conditioned the researchers added live sheep to the enclosure. At first the sheep were scared and huddled in a corner. Then they noticed that the wolves were not stalking them and were even doing their best to avoid them. Cindy said that in the end the sheep were chasing the wolves around the pen. I should mention that Cindy has been a Veterinarian for almost 20 years. She graduated with the highest grade in her class (a gpa of 3.99).
Why in the world are people not looking into this more?
