Drew, what predation are you thinking of this time of year when it comes to livestock?

Sure.

So, you know, it's fall calving season.

Newborn calves, newborn lambs, newborn goat kids, tends to be that the newborn livestock are, are the most vulnerable age group of livestock that we have to predation.

And across the country, it tends to be that coyote predation is the most common source of predation that any kind of livestock producer tends to have.

But we also have some other predators that might be responsible for predation in Kansas.

That could include bobcats.

states.What is the first thing you look at when you do see a dead young animal, maybe out in a pasture or out in a field?

Drew, what predation are you thinking of this time of year when it comes to livestock?

Sure.

So, you know, it's fall calving season.

Newborn calves, newborn lambs, newborn goat kids, tends to be that the newborn livestock are, are the most vulnerable age group of livestock that we have to predation.

And across the country, it tends to be that coyote predation is the most common source of predation that any kind of livestock producer tends to have.

But we also have some other predators that might be responsible for predation in Kansas.

That could include bobcats.

states.What is the first thing you look at when you do see a dead young animal, maybe out in a pasture or out in a field?

Or have they dropped off? What's going on with doves?

Well, so we, you know, we've got a couple of, uh, different ways of looking at this.

If we look at it really long term from the late '60s when the data that we have for, for monitoring doves start, then we basically see some, generally speaking, some declines in dove populations, but they've actually rebounded in the last 10 years or so.

And, and, and really it's in the last five.

When we look at the different regions that there are in the United States, the Eastern Management Unit has had a slight increase since 1966.

And, and by slight, we're talking about just shy of two-tenths of a percent per year increase since 1996.

But during that last, uh, 10 years or so, there's been just, just about a three-quarters of a percent decrease in the per year rate that we're looking at.

You know, if I want to encourage some of these mourning dove to be on my property, it doesn't even have to just be for hunting, but if I want to encourage more dove on my property, what are some things that I could, could do as a, a habitat manager to help that happen?

For these hunting plots, what crop or food choices do you have that are maybe really popular but might not be a recommendation?

One of the groups of plants that folks often hear about and like to plant is Abrasica.

So this is a plant that's in the broccoli family.

The common plants that we see in food plots might be turnips, some kind of radish, rape or canola would be another name for that plant.

kale, those are all plants that deer oftentimes select in the right situation.

But in areas with acidic soils, we can see that sulfur can be really high in the natural food that's available that deer are including in their diet.

And those brassicas actually accumulate sulfur.

What would you be recommending?

Generally, you want to be harvesting fish from your pond if you want to have bigger fish over time in your pond.

What about grass carp, Joe? I've heard that they eat all the plants in the pond and they are the golden ticket or the silver bullet.

That's the word I'm looking for.

They're the silver bullet for vegetation management.

They're not a solution that a lot of times people think that they are.

You know, I've heard if we've got some plants in a pond, we better get out there with herbicide and kill all them weeds.

Sure.

So what about that one?

What can we do about it?

Sure.

So, you know, if, if we've got raccoons that are coming into a yard and causing problems in a yard, um, then, then there, there's a few different things that we can do.

And, and really regardless of what the problem is, we oftentimes try to do the, the non-lethal approaches first.

Because if, if we don't...

E- even if we do remove a few problem animals first, if we don't implement those non-lethal strategies, then we're gonna have a recurring problem.

It may not recur next week after we, we remove a raccoon.

Sure.

Drew, wanting to talk about a new study from UC Davis that looks at the diet analysis of gray wolves and how do they go about doing this research?

Yeah, so this is a really cool study that uses a very modern approach to look at the diet of a carnivore species in an area where livestock production is really important.

And so the research team, which also included some ranchers who were involved in cattle production activities, collected carnivore scats.

They wanted to make sure that they collected all potential wolf scats.

And so they didn't try and differentiate between scats that might have been from wolves or coyotes or bobcats or mountain lions.

So they actually used DNA analysis to identify the source of all the scats that they collected.

So they collected something like 380 scats.

What application do you see this having for Kansas?

Drew, wanting to talk about a new study from UC Davis that looks at the diet analysis of gray wolves, and how did they go about doing this research?

Yeah, so this is a, a really cool study that uses a very modern approach to, to look at the diet of a carnivore species in an area where livestock production is really important.

And so the research team, which also included some ranchers who, who were involved in cattle production activities, collected carnivore scats.

They wanted to make sure that they collected all potential wolf scats, and so they didn't try and differentiate between scats that might have been from wolves or coyotes or bobcats or mountain lions.

So they actually used DNA analysis to identify the source of all the scats that they collected.

So they, they collected something like 380 scats, and through that DNA analysis, they whittled that down to about 100 scats that they could confirm that were from gray wolves.

They also used DNA analysis to identify how many individuals they collected samples from, so there were at least 20 individuals that they could differentiate.

What application do you see this having for Kansas?

Drew, for this time of year, what's an important factor to keep in mind when it comes to wildlife?

This is a good time of the year just to remind folks that when we come across wildlife, it's really best to just let them be wild.

You know, this time of the year, we- we've got fawns that are, have been recently born.

Their defense mechanism is actually just to hold really still when a predator comes by.

Uh, they're gonna hide.

They're gonna try and hide down in the grass or whatever kind of cover there is.

And so when we come across them, it can seem like there's this abandoned or orphaned fawn there.

What should someone do if their dog does bring back wildlife to them?

Drew, for this time of year, what's an important factor to keep in mind when it comes to wildlife?

This is a good time of the year just to remind folks that when we come across wildlife, it's really best to just let them be wild.

You know, this time of the year, we- we've got fawns that are, have been recently born.

Their defense mechanism is actually just to hold really still when a predator comes by.

Uh, they're gonna hide.

They're gonna try and hide down in the grass or whatever kind of cover there is.

And so when we come across them, it can seem like there's this abandoned or orphaned fawn there, but really, mom is probably close by.

What should someone do if their dog does bring back wildlife to them?

trapping's been around for a long time right so i mean i'm sure that we can go back you know eons and and you know really long periods of time but thinking about more of a modern type of trapping scenario when did trapping really become a thing and and how have it how has it advanced from then kind of to now

Sure.

So, you know, the original foothold trappers, at least in North America, would have been the mountain men that were chasing beaver around, right? And they tended to use the main trap during that time would have been a long spring type trap.

So it would have used a large leaf spring to be the main source of power within that trap.

And it probably had relatively thin jaws.

It probably had jaws that closed all the way.

Maybe had teeth, probably didn't.

know in addition to just managing populations we've talked a lot about harvesting animals when they're causing human wildlife conflict problems and so you know how does that tie into the whole bigger picture of trapping that we've talked about

Thank you, Dr. Ricketts.

Yeah.

Thanks, Katie.

Um, like she said, I'm Drew Ricketts.

I'm the extension wildlife specialist out of K-State.

So, um, one of the things I really enjoy doing is traveling around and just kind of teaching people about wildlife.

And, um, so I get to meet lots of cool people, think about lots of interesting problems that critters cause, and also help people enhance wildlife habitat on their property.

Do you know why?

Drew, what snakes might people find in Kansas?

We have 42 species of snakes.

So it's much more likely that you're going to encounter a non-venomous snake than a venomous one.

And, you know, people who enjoy seeing snakes are probably going to recognize many different species.

Some common ones that we would see throughout the state would be a couple of different species of rat snakes.

The Western rat snake is one that we typically would call a black rat snake because most of them are black snakes.

There's also a great plains rat snake.

Could people also be encountering snakes in their homes?

However, what is some value they bring to the economy?

One of the things that turkey vultures provide or the main thing that they provide is something that we probably don't think about all the time.

And that's removal of organic matter in the form of dead animals.

So they are a scavenger.

They're not really predatory.

They get almost all their calories from stuff that they find already being dead.

And a group of researchers out of South America collected data in the United States, South America, and throughout the turkey vulture range, basically.

While they are providing those removal services, what are some challenges they're also creating?

But what does it do for wildlife management?

Yeah, so really when we're thinking about wildlife habitat management, prescribed fire is the cheapest management practice that we can do in any ecosystem.

And really most ecosystems throughout North America are adapted to have prescribed fire in them.

It's really important from the perspective that ecosystems want to go through this process called succession, where we start maybe with bare soil after a big flood, or we till an area or something like that, and then we get the annual weeds, and then we transition to perennial plants and maybe perennial grasses and shrubs and early successional trees like cedars and elms and that sort of thing, and on into a climax community that might be In eastern Kansas, oak trees.

It might be cottonwood forest in western Kansas.

And that prescribed fire helps to set that process back or slow it so that we can maintain a plant community that critters might want to have.

So maintaining prairie is a really important thing that prescribed fire does to us by setting back those woody plants.

Do you have any mortality concerns for wildlife when it comes to prescribed fire?

And what is their usual breeding season? And then when are they usually having those pups?

Sure.

So, you know, typically coyotes are going to be breeding between January and sometime in March.

That average female will become pregnant at some point in February based on some pretty robust data sets from Kansas going back a long time.

Their gestation period is about 60 days.

So, you know, those breeding event at the beginning of February would result in pups being born in April and And then, you know, their life cycle development and those sorts of things is fairly similar to dogs.

So like we said, 60-day gestation around eight weeks is when those coyote pups would be weaned.

Are there some valid concerns when it comes to safety and thinking about coyotes?

Drew, bringing some attention to some research about are raccoons being domesticated and who has done this research?

Yeah, so recently there's been a fair bit of publicity I've heard on radio programs.

I've seen it on TV and on social media quite a bit about a study that was conducted by some researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock University.

where they were looking at populations of raccoons in different areas and looking for signs of what we would call domestication syndrome.

And so when we think about animals becoming domesticated from the wild species that they started out as, there are a number of traits that they can develop that that basically are adaptations to allow them to be less fearful of humans, maybe, or to allow humans to be less fearful of them, that facilitate the process of those critters living in close proximity to humans becoming white.

like domesticated poultry that we see, that's an example of this, or a smaller brain, maybe less sharp teeth or less long teeth.

And the characteristic that they specifically looked at in this study was rostrum length, which would basically be the length of the snout.

And do they see a difference for the length of that snout, whether in rural areas or urban areas?

What do you

think? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, all the videos that you've described so far have a lot of entertainment value to them.

but all of them, even the ones that seem innocuous, like a critter jumping on a trampoline, all, all of these videos contain our perception of these animals because you mentioned the word anthropomorphizing.

And so that just basically means projecting human behaviors or characteristics, um, thoughts, feelings, those sorts of things on the critters and, and You know, we see a trampoline as a thing to go jump on and play on, right? And if we start thinking about a rabbit or a black bear wanting to go jump on the trampoline like a human, then that's probably on the lowest scale of that anthropomorphization process.

And I think all of those videos together can really make us or help people understand shape a opinion or a view of these critters that can make us forget that they're wild and think of them more like humans or more like our pets and those sorts of things.

That's always the first thing I look for because right now anyway that's the easiest way to identify it.

And sometimes it almost just looks like a blurry patch in the background, right? Yeah.

What are the different types of skunks we have in Kansas or have had in Kansas?

We've got striped skunks, which are the most common.

And all the skunks that we have in North America tend to have some stripes.

So you can't just go off of whether they have stripes on their body or not.

But the striped skunk has a really narrow white stripe down its kind of forehead and nose.

So that's the stripe that it's named for.

And they'll have black bodies typically with the white stripes.

If these skunks, specifically the striped skunks, are only living for a few years, how are they able to keep their population up?

Drew, what question and concerns have you been getting from a lot of people when it comes to raccoons?

This year, we are seeing lots and lots of sick raccoons in towns pretty much throughout Kansas.

And what that tends to be most commonly in our state and really throughout the United States is canine distemper virus.

And canine distemper virus, of course, is a disease that's caused by a virus.

It can affect dogs.

It affects many species of mammals that are wild.

So this is a virus that manifests as kind of a nasty flu, if we were to think about it.

Are people more likely to see these raccoons in towns and cities or in rural places?

And how does this coloration of being whether cryptic or warning colors play into if they're a prey or going to be preyed on?

There's a new study that came out this summer in the journal Science.

It was replicated across the whole globe, basically.

So it's got really robust results because they put out like 15,000 results.

artificial lepidopterans which lepidoptera is the family that moths and butterflies are in so they put out these triangles of paper that had a mealworm on them so they actually had a food reward and the artificial moths or butterflies were either brightly colored and then some of them were your typical let's say a monarch butterfly type color it's red or orange and black that alternate and stand out.

Well, animals that have eaten the monarch butterfly know that they have nasty compounds inside of them that come from the milkweed plants that they feed on as caterpillars that might make me sick.

And so then I avoid eating that color of caterpillar out there because of that warning coloration they also put out some atypical warning coloration which instead of the orange and black might have been blue and black so still strong contrasting and it stood out but it was different from what those predators would have been used to seeing and then they also put out some paper triangles that were brown that would blend into the environment like that cryptic coloration.

What is most likely to be preyed on?