Mange?

J

JeremyKS

New member
wondering if anybody can give me some details of mange? what exactly is it? do they ever get rid of it does it have a cycle any other info would be appreciated thanks
 
It has been my understanding that the mites are host specific and they can only infect another animal by direct contact. They can sense a 5 degree temperature drop in the infected animal and are forced to find a new host or die.In other words the mites are unable to survive in a den or anywhere else without a host.

Randy
 
i guess thats a good thing or otherwise it could be lots worse I suspect...looks like it is a never ending cycle because the mites are always laying new eggs. So once a coyote has it, it will never get rid of it. Is that true? so to truely get rid of it in an area any coyote that has it must die so they do not continue to spread it.
 
You are correct Jeremy. Some yotes are not affected by the mite for some reason. After the mange goes through an area, the remaining coyotes are usually not going to get it for awhile. More coyotes move in and the process starts all over again. Usually cycles in decades though.
 
Originally posted by mikegranger:
[qb] You are correct Jeremy. Some yotes are not affected by the mite for some reason. After the mange goes through an area, the remaining coyotes are usually not going to get it for awhile. More coyotes move in and the process starts all over again. Usually cycles in decades though. [/qb]
Click to expand...
Mike, can you describe the decade cycle a little more. The reason I ask is about 5-7 years ago we started noticing some bad cases of mange in some of the dogs we called in. The dog numbers have been slowly declining since then. It's gotten to the point where some of our best calling ground has turn into a "dead-zone" for coyotes. You can hunt some of these places now or drive the roads after a fresh snow and you'll be lucky to cut one set of coyote tracks. Every year we say that it can't get any worse, and it does. I know that it can't get any worse after this year!(zero dogs is zero dogs) So is this going to stay at a low for a long time, or slowly start climbing back?

The Lord knows we have the food source for a quick recovery, we are getting over-run with bunnies. Drive down a gravel road at night and it's easy to see 12 rabbits in 1 mile.
 
Nef,
I'll give you some first hand experience. Here where I hunt, the mange hit about 7 years ago. Since then coyote numbers have continued to decline. I keep thinking the mange should be over with each year but it continues to linger. North of here, the mange has come and gone, thus my driving so many miles to find coyotes. Over in North Dakota, my buddies told me the mange lasted approximately 3 years, wiping out all the coyotes. They rebounded and are now plentiful again. The winters are more severe over there which helps speed up the process. With the drought and abnormally warm winters, I don't know how long it will last here. Needless to say, I'm praying for sooner than later.

I forgot to mention that a study was done on mange in south Texas. It lingered in the population for over ten years!!!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
Killed the third dog out of a pack today with mange... all three have been killed from a particular 40 acre farm and ALL three have had some nasty mange. The three dogs have been harvested over the past three months... I keep thinking they'll clean up but they haven't yet. I guess the entire pack is infected in that area. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif


Two of the three have been yearlings.
 
Well, hopefully things will start to turn around then.

jrb, I can relate. One of the few stands where I had luck locally (early dec.) was on a double that came in. They came in so fast I couldn't get them stopped. I took the back one running, and couldn't get on the leader before it dove through some plum thickets and was gone. My partner and I walked up, and the dog was bald! But, it's on par with most of the dogs I've shot around here the last few years. Anyway, my partner went back a couple weeks ago and sat where I had been and called the one that got away in, killed it 20 yrds from where mine was still laying. It was bald too. My partner then found it's bed (in the snow) walking to the next stand, said it was covered in yellow pus and blood along with alot of coyote hair. How it managed to live those 6 weeks with the weather we had is beyond me, but it's obvious the education I gave it didn't take when it was in that bad of shape.
 
Mange hit here in Minnesota in 1998. We had a freezing rain in Jan of 1999 and that killed an easy 90% of our foxes. They have not made any kind of comeback. Coyotes have come in and taken over. The problem is that there aren't many coyotes either.

We can get on a snowmobile and drive fifty miles without seeing a single fox or coyote track.

That's dismal.

Thanks Montana.
 
Now Buker, we only sped the process up. Besides, they thought they were doing good!! Just like Bubba when he comes back from chasing the coyotes away. He's all smiles.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
It seems to be the same way here. Last year I thought it was real bad but we had a real mild winter. This year we have had some tough storms with temps below 0 several days in a row which is very cold for Kansas standards so hopefully that speeds the process up. During one of these cold spells my partner and I were driving around scouting for an up coming contest and we were driving around a dairy. We decided we would get out and brave the -temp wind chills and get atop a hill to do some glassing. On our way back from atop the hill a nasty ole mangy coyote ran right past my pickup not more than 20 ft from the tail gate. It had ran out of some hay bales that we had parked our pickup by. We kind of had our laughs and decided to get back in our pickup but before doing so we decided to kick off all the ice that was on my running boards. As we were driving away another coyote ran right out in front of us not more than 10 feet from the pickup he was also very mangy. We continue to leave and look back and another mangy coyote ran right out of the bales but did not like the cold much and just stood there and looked at us. We decide we would get out and check out the bales to see how many were living in the bales, but all we found was a house cat and some large tunnels in the hay. So I guess the mangy coyotes are even smart and have ways of surviving. During the contest we hunted in the same area and we shot 9 coyotes total in 2 days and 7 of those coyotes had mange real bad so I guess we helped the process of ending mange by stopping 7 coyotes from spreading it to good coyotes, if there are any left....It seems like we always see mangy coyotes by theirselves except for on one occassion during the contest when we called in a triple and there was 1 good coyote and 2 mangy ones. Has anybody else noticed that the good hair coyotes kind of tend to stay together and the mangy ones do the same? I know the mangy ones smell real bad but do you think coyotes care and tend not to associate with mangy ones?
 
Mike G-- Just curious. Do you think the mange killed the coyotes off or maybe just pushed them to a "cleaner" area. I realize some probably froze to death with no fur. A random thought.
 
When I was a little boy my Grandpa had fox dogs [like 40 at a time] and he would trade for a dog and it would come down with the mange and he would have us grandchildren catch the dog and he would rub burn motor oil all over the dog and where he slept and that would clean up the mange. now I see why it worked it is a parasite
live bug. it is here in Arkansas.


Arkansas Frog
 
Glen, It eventually kills them. They are territorial, even with mange, and will most likely die within their established home range.
 


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