To keep coyotes away from your yard, do three things in order: remove every food attractant (garbage, pet food, fallen fruit, birdseed, and unattended small pets), make the yard physically harder to enter with a six-foot fence topped by a roller or outward angle and skirted against digging, and haze any coyote that shows up — loudly, immediately, and every single time. No repellent spray or gadget substitutes for those three steps, but together they resolve the overwhelming majority of coyote problems without anyone touching a trap or a rifle.
Coyotes now live in virtually every city and suburb in North America, and they are there for rational reasons: our neighborhoods are full of rodents, rabbits, fruit trees, water, and quiet daytime cover. That is good news for your odds of success, because it means a yard that stops offering those things stops being worth visiting. This guide covers the full playbook — attractant removal, fencing that actually works, hazing technique, pet and livestock protection, and when to bring in your state wildlife agency.
Step 1: Remove the Food, and the Coyotes Follow
Wildlife agencies are unanimous that food attractants sit at the root of nearly every backyard coyote problem. Work through this list honestly: secure garbage in wildlife-resistant cans or put bins out only on pickup morning; never leave pet food or water bowls outside, especially overnight; pick up fallen fruit from apple, persimmon, and other fruit trees; manage bird feeders, because spilled seed feeds the mice and rats that coyotes hunt (as our guide to what coyotes eat explains, rodents are their core food); close off compost from meat scraps; and clean grease from grills. Feeding coyotes deliberately is the single worst thing anyone can do — it is the common thread in most attack case histories and is illegal in many jurisdictions.
Two attractants people forget: outdoor cats and unattended small dogs are themselves attractants, and a bird-feeding station that builds a backyard rabbit and rodent population is effectively a coyote buffet. You do not have to give up feeding birds — just use trays that catch spill and clean beneath feeders.
Step 2: Fencing That Actually Stops a Coyote
Coyotes are excellent jumpers and even better climbers-over and diggers-under, so ordinary four-foot fencing barely slows one down. A genuinely coyote-resistant fence is at least six feet tall; defeats climbing at the top with a “coyote roller” (a spinning bar that denies paw purchase), an outward-angled extension of 15 to 20 degrees, or taut wire above the fence line; and defeats digging at the bottom with an L-shaped mesh apron buried a few inches deep and extending one to two feet outward, or a concrete mow strip. Check gates — the gap beneath a gate is the most common breach point. For gardens and chicken runs, welded-wire hardware cloth beats chicken wire, which coyotes and raccoons can tear.
Electric additions — a hot wire at the top and another near the ground outside the fence — are highly effective where local codes allow them, and portable electrified mesh is the standard for protecting small livestock flocks in coyote country.
Step 3: Hazing — the Skill Every Coyote-Country Resident Should Have
Hazing is the wildlife-agency term for aggressively, harmlessly persuading a coyote that humans are trouble, and it is a legitimate, recommended practice — not cruelty. Done consistently, it retrains habituated animals and keeps whole neighborhoods’ coyotes wary. The technique: stand tall, face the coyote, make yourself large with raised arms or a flapped jacket, and advance a step or two while shouting firmly. Add noise — an air horn, a whistle, banging pans, a shaken can of coins — and motion, such as tossing sticks or clumps of dirt toward (never directly at) the animal. A hose or squirt gun works well in yards. Keep it up until the coyote fully leaves the area; stopping when it only trots ten yards teaches the wrong lesson. Never haze a coyote that is cornered, visibly sick, or defending pups at a den — back away and report those instead. And critically: everyone in the household and ideally the neighborhood should haze, every time, because one neighbor tossing scraps undoes ten neighbors’ good work.
Protecting Pets in Coyote Country
Most heartbreak around coyotes involves pets, and most of it is preventable. Keep cats indoors — an indoor cat is essentially immune to coyotes. Supervise dogs under about 25 pounds whenever they are outside between dusk and dawn; a human standing in the yard is itself a strong deterrent, and a leash keeps a dog from chasing a coyote into trouble. Light the yard before letting dogs out at night, and consider a coyote-proof dog run for small breeds that need unsupervised time. During the January-to-March breeding season and spring denning months, be extra careful with dogs of any size, since territorial escorting behavior peaks then. Our companion piece on whether coyotes are dangerous covers the full risk picture for pets, kids, and adults.
Walkers and runners in coyote country can carry the whole toolkit in a pocket: a small air horn or whistle, a flashlight after dark, and the confidence to use both. Walk dogs on fixed leads rather than retractables where coyotes are active — a dog twenty feet ahead around a blind corner is how most escorting incidents start.
Protecting Chickens and Small Livestock
For backyard poultry, goats, and sheep, layered defense is the rule: a secure, fully enclosed coop or night pen (coyotes take most livestock at night), electrified net fencing for daytime paddocks, and prompt removal of any carcasses, which otherwise train coyotes to associate your property with food. Livestock guardian animals — dogs bred for the work, as well as donkeys and llamas — have long track records against coyotes on small holdings. Motion-activated lights and sprinklers add a useful startle layer, though coyotes eventually see through any static device that is not backed by real consequences.
What About Repellents, Lights, and Ultrasonic Devices?
Predator urine granules, flashing-light units, ultrasonic emitters, and similar products are heavily marketed and lightly supported by evidence. Coyotes are intelligent and quickly learn that a device that never does anything is safe to ignore. Motion-activated sprinklers probably perform best of the gadget class because they deliver an actual consequence. Treat all such products as supplements to attractant removal, fencing, and hazing — never as the plan itself. Likewise, keeping brush trimmed and eliminating crawl-space and under-deck hiding spots removes the daytime cover coyotes prefer.
What Not to Do
Do not feed coyotes, ever, and ask neighbors to stop if they do. Do not run from a coyote or turn your back on a bold one — walk away facing it after hazing. Do not rely on trapping or relocation: relocating coyotes is illegal in many states, usually fatal to the moved animal, and territory vacated by removal is refilled within months, often by less wary animals — the same resilience that has defeated a century of eradication campaigns. And do not attempt to handle a sick or injured coyote yourself. For a coyote that cannot be hazed off, approaches people, or appears ill, contact your state wildlife agency or local animal control; that is exactly what they are for. It is also worth remembering the upside of a resident coyote pair: they suppress the rodents and rabbits in your neighborhood and are a major natural check on deer numbers, as our guide to what eats deer lays out — the goal is a wary coyote at a distance, not an empty ecosystem.
The Coyote Calendar: When to Expect Trouble
Coyote pressure on yards is seasonal, and knowing the calendar lets you concentrate effort. January through March is breeding season: adults range widely, males challenge dogs, and sightings spike. April through June is denning and pup season: parents hunt around the clock, defend den buffers assertively, and are most likely to escort dogs out of an area — if a normally shy coyote suddenly shadows your walks along one stretch of greenbelt, you have probably found the den buffer, and the fix is a different route for a few weeks. July through September, hungry pups and their teachers hit yards hardest for fruit, rodents, and anything unsecured; this is when attractant discipline pays most. October through December, the year’s young disperse into unfamiliar territory — inexperienced, bold-acting animals show up in odd places, and consistent hazing teaches them quickly that your block is not a vacancy. A yard that stays buttoned up through all four seasons rarely appears on any coyote’s circuit at all.
Make It a Neighborhood Project
A single secured yard on a street of open garbage cans mostly redirects coyote traffic next door. The neighborhoods that genuinely change coyote behavior do three things together: they get attractant removal adopted street-wide (an HOA or community newsletter piece works wonders), they agree that everyone hazes bold coyotes the same way every time, and they establish where reports go — usually a city animal-services line or the state wildlife agency’s regional office — so a genuinely problematic animal gets flagged early with a paper trail. Communities that have run coordinated hazing-and-attractant programs, from Denver suburbs to Chicago neighborhoods, consistently report bolder coyotes turning wary again within weeks. It is unglamorous work, but it is what actually moves the needle — far more than any gadget sold for the purpose.
What smells or sounds keep coyotes away?
No smell or sound reliably keeps coyotes away on its own. Ammonia-soaked rags, predator urine, and ultrasonic devices all fade fast as coyotes learn they carry no consequence. Noise works when a human makes it during active hazing; the same air horn mounted on a post does nothing within a week or two.
Will getting a big dog keep coyotes out of my yard?
A large dog’s presence and scent-marking deter casual coyote visits, and true livestock guardian breeds are genuinely effective. But an ordinary pet dog is not a guardian: during breeding season a bold coyote pair may challenge even large dogs, so the fence-and-supervision rules still apply.
Do coyotes jump fences?
Easily. A coyote can clear about five feet outright and can scramble over much taller fences by hooking its front paws on the top and pushing over — which is why height alone is not enough and effective fences add a roller bar or outward angle at the top plus a buried apron at the bottom.
A coyote keeps coming back even though I have done everything — now what?
Persistent visits usually mean an attractant you have not found — a neighbor feeding wildlife, rats under a shed, fruit over the fence line — or a den nearby in spring. Walk the area with fresh eyes, coordinate with neighbors so hazing is consistent street-wide, and if a coyote still cannot be discouraged or begins approaching people, contact your state wildlife agency for site-specific help.
