Injured Male Coyote ~ Case 435 (and Female Case 436)

DFW Wildlife Coalition, and McKinney Animal Control, requested our assistance in locating, tracking, and medically treating this male Coyote who has mange and a severe injury to the rear left leg (possibly the Flexor Dogotorum Lateralis).  We have treated a lot of coyotes over the years and we are looking forward to helping this boy.  

Within the neighborhood that he had been being seen, we located one of his dens through our aerial search utilizing thermal imaging.  We setup a video monitored feeding station inside of his den in order not to lure him outside of his natural habitat. ~~ Coyotes are resilient to extremity injuries as long as they can hunt and they are not sick.  This coyote is sick with mange on top of his injury making his chance of survival slim without treatment.  We can treat his mange in the field under our very precise wildlife treatment protocol and he should begin to flourish.  Just one oral dose will treat and effectively cure his mange mite infestation for four months.  

Coyotes most often get mange when they consume rodents that have been poisoned by local residents.  These poisons are convenient for residents but detrimental to our wildlife who suffer a great deal for weeks or months till their deaths.  

DFW Wildlife Coalition: https://www.dfwwildlife.org

Using foods contained in a coyote’s natural diet, we deployed a video monitored feeding station in order to establish a feeding routine for this sick and injured coyote.  Once we ensure that he will continue to come back to the feeding station on a routine basis, we will medicate him during one of his feedings.   This medication is expensive, $98 per dose, but it will safely treat his mange in just a single dose, lasting four full months.  This treatment protocol is so much better than using the less expensive Ivermectin, where multiple doses are required.  It is often difficult to ensure that a single coyote will be able to receive multi-dose treatments so our protocol works so much better!  

His home is large!  Now we wait until he finds the feeding station which can take 2-5 days.  We will continue to replenish the station every 24 hours.  

Now that we are getting a closer look at him, he is in pretty rough shape.  Thankfully he ate all of the food.  We will replenish the food shortly so that food is there when he shows up again.  

This little fella had a lot of days in between the last time he showed up and ate.  This is normal behavior under his circumstances of illness and injury.  There is also another mangy coyote lingering in the area which changes the dynamic of when the injured one shows up.  We are going to put fresh food out for him and hope that he comes sooner this time.  We will be medicating him very soon.  

The medication has been added to his food!  We put it on the bottom so that if other wildlife shows up before he does, we will have time to deter him/her from eating the medication by shewing him/her away through our camera speaker.  

➡️ She takes the medicine at precisely 6 min/3 sec into the video.  

This is where our diligent tactics come in.  With the new female already being treated last night, we have to ensure she does not retrieve the medication we deployed today for the injured male.  How we do this is, we only leave the medication in the bowl while our team is awake and available to monitor the cameras in real time.  If our cameras detect anyone besides our target male at the feeding station we have the ability to remotely sound a siren at the feeding station to “shew” the animal away!  This works like a charm!  ~~ If our injured male target does not show before our team goes to bed then we will remove the medication from the food and redeploy the medication the next day.   This is how we ensure only our target receives the medication.  

He showed up almost on schedule and ate the food that contained the medication!   

We will continue to monitor both the male and female in the weeks to come in order to monitor their health improvement progress.  We will post progress photos and videos here.