EDMONTON - With three hard-working border collies nipping at his heels, Wesley Henning climbs aboard a hulking tractor and rumbles across the pasture on his snowy 128-hectare parcel in Rochfort Bridge. The sheep farmer hauls a 700-kilogram bale of hay and lays it down for a flock of 500 ewes following in his wake.

A native of Northern Ireland who came to Alberta in 1987, Henning checks on his sheep before he goes to bed each night. He swears he can hear them bleating from more than one kilometre way.

“They are lovely little things, and they are like kids, continually getting into trouble,” says Henning, 66. “They are so helpless you feel compelled to protect them.”

To keep his flock safe, Henning has spent $25,000 on fencing and owns a Great Pyrenees, a fierce watchdog that is quick to challenge intruders, two-legged or four-legged. But he still loses as many as 10 per cent of his animals to coyotes despite the numerous precautions.

“I don’t hate coyotes. In fact, I have a lot of respect for them,” Henning says. “They are very smart. They sit and watch, and when you give them an opportunity, they take it.

“We may have the watches, but the coyotes have the time.”

Despite bounties and large-scale efforts to kill them, coyotes have greatly expanded their range throughout Canada and the United States the past 100 years. Abundant in Alberta, they are a nuisance to many livestock farmers and a pest in particular to the province’s 1,400-odd sheep producers.

Although they are reimbursed for losses attributed to wolves, cougars and bears, Alberta’s sheep farmers receive no compensation for animals killed by coyotes because they lack the similar designation of predator. In 2013, the most recent year for which numbers are available, provincial agricultural agents recorded 146 complaints of suspected coyote predation from farmers.

“The losses are staggering,” Henning says, estimating he loses 90 and 130 sheep and lambs each year at a cost of $10,000 or more. “Some guys get into sheep and lambs and are out of it in five years. One day they suddenly realize they have spent a lot of money and are getting no return, and can’t figure out where their numbers went. “Financially, it takes a toll.”

A third-generation farmer whose family raised cows, pigs and sheep, and grew potatoes in Ulster, Henning emigrated to Canada and bought a tract of land in the picturesque hamlet 130 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. He has little time for holidays.

He gets a hand during lambing season from Florence, his Irish bride of more than 40 years.

“We literally met in a potato field,” Henning says, his brogue as thick as the day he arrived. “I noticed her when she came to my family’s farm to pick potatoes.”

Henning’s ewes give birth to 800 lambs in an average year, with the offspring sold to a packing plant in Innisfail and smaller abattoirs that cater to a growing number of immigrants. He calls his farm a low-cost operation and does everything he can to deter predators, including enlisting hunters to shoot problem coyotes. Using traps and poison is out of the question because it could kill his sheep-herding border collies, valued at more than $3,000 each.

“If it wasn’t for hunters keeping the numbers of coyotes down, I don’t think you could keep sheep here,” Henning says over tea and scones in his farmhouse, which is decorated with paintings of lambs and sheep knick-knacks. “You have to find a balance between how much you earn, the cost of labour and the cost of keeping coyotes out. “Getting around them can be very expensive.”