Livestock "bone yards"(disposal burial pits for dead cattle, sheep and other livestock) are the equivalent of Suburban dumps and Urban Garbage bins.........They are all of the ways we humans dispose of "organic food waste"...........All of these disposal habits gets our Carnivores in trouble with us and leads to their demise.............The Ophactory glands of Coyotes, Bears, Wolves, Cougars, etc, etc are so well developed that they can detect our "garbage" miles away................the expression "a fed bear is a dead bear" applies to all of our Carnivores............George Wuerthner provides us with "detail" below of studies revealing that we must change the way that we dispose of "eatable waste" if we are to minimize Carnivore habituation to human occupied dwellings and landscapes

From: George Wuerthner <gwuerthner@gmail.com>
To: Scott and Adelina Kronberg 
Sent: Sat May 21 11:19:19 2011
Subject: Carcasses and predator FYI

Failure to remove dead animals and/or creation of "bone yards" is one the poor livestock husbandry practices that increases livestock/predator conflicts.

Here's a study on coyotes that found that livestock carcasses promotes predator conflicts in two ways--habituating predators to livestock and of course by drawing in and concentrating predators in or near livestock. Although the focus of this study was coyotes, the same basic principles apply to wolves and bears.

"Our results also have implications for live-
stock producers because large amounts of car-
rion can increase livestock losses in 2 ways: by
habituating coyotes to feed on livestock flesh
and by increasing and concentrating local coy-
ote densities around livestock (Green et al.
1994).

Habituating coyotes to feed on livestock
carrion can lead to coyotes' developing a taste
for livestock and could consequently lead to
actual predation instead of scavenging (Fichter
et al. 1955, Gier 1968, Phillips and Hubert
1980).

Green et al. (1994) indicated that where
carrion is generally not available, livestock
losses are lower , and they concluded that car-
rion removal is an important method of dam-
age prevention to reduce livestock losses to
coyotes. Our results support those of Green et. al

Western North American Naturalist 64(1), ©2004, pp. 53–58
COYOTE (CANIS LATRANS) MOVEMENTS RELATIVE TO
CATTLE (BOS TAURUS) CARCASS AREASJan F. Kamler1,2, Warren B. Ballard1,3, Rickey L. Gilliland4, and Kevin Mote5

ABSTRACT.—Use of 2 cattle carcass areas was determined for radio-collared coyotes (Canis latrans) in northwest
Texas from January 1999 to January 2000. When 0–3 dead cattle were located at the carcass areas, resident and transient
coyotes visited the carcass areas 4% and 8% of the time, respectively. However, when 30–35 dead cattle were located at
1 carcass area due to a disease epizootic, resident and transient coyotes had increased visitation rates of 19% and 63%,
respectively. Resident coyotes traveled as far as 12.2 km from the center of their home ranges, suggesting that carcass areas
influenced residents over a 468-km2 area. Transient coyotes traveled from as far as 20.5 km away, suggesting that carcass
areas influenced transients over a 1320-km2 area. Our results indicate that carcass areas can influence coyotes over large
areas and may concentrate both resident and transient coyotes in relatively small areas, at least for short periods.
.