INDIANAPOLIS — Unlike turkey vultures, black vultures aren’t just scavengers.
“In the last few years we’ve had the emergence of black vultures who are migrating steadily from south of the Ohio River and those black vultures are the species that are causing us livestock damage,” said Greg Slipher, Livestock Specialist at the Indiana Farm Bureau.
Rollin Bach is a cattle farmer and he said his first suspected run-in with black vultures happened with his 1-day-old calves. He said that when he went out to check on them the next morning, they were about 100 yards from where they had been the night before and the buzzards had completely eaten one of the calves.
“There has to be maybe 50 to 100 of them,” Bach said.
He said when they’re normally going for a calf, they separate the cow from the calf and then pluck the eyeballs out.
Bach said he’s even seen them attack a full cow. It happened several years after the attack on the calves and the cow that was killed by the black vultures had some issues with her legs after giving birth. Bach said he was going out to the pasture to give her an injection that the veterinarian had prescribed to help her heal.
“Soon as I get through the gate, and I see buzzards around her and I said, ‘What happened to her? There wasn’t that much wrong with her.’ And I was thinking she must have died,” Bach said. “Well, I went down there and she was still alive and these black vultures was eating on her.”
Bach ended up having to destroy the cow because the vultures had done so much damage.
But like all migratory birds, black vultures are federally protected, which means one can’t be killed without a permit.
“If you get caught doing it they could really fine the bejeebers outta ya,” Bach said.
However, black vultures do serve a purpose.
“In other parts of the world, where there have been catastrophic vulture declines, they’ve had increases in rabies and increases in rats and feral dogs – which have cost billions of dollars in human health consequences,” said Marian Wahl, a PhD student in the Department of Forestry and Resources at Purdue University.
Wahl, along with a team of researchers, is collecting data to help determine how widespread the livestock attacks are and to try to find symbiotic solutions.
Still, black vultures are hurting farmers economically.
“There was other farmers in the area that were having more trouble than I was, that lost seven or eight calves by them,” Bach said. “He probably lost $10,000.”
Getting a permit to kill the birds in Indiana wasn’t as easy as it was in other states that have long dealt with black vultures.
“Each producer that wanted a black vulture permit had to call the federal government and make an application with them and a $100 fee,” Slipher said.
But now that’s changed, and the Indiana Farm Bureau said this change happened because of farmers like Bach who reached out to legislators and officials asking for a change.
Now, farmers in Indiana can get a permit without having to go through the federal government.
“U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service granted the Indiana Farm Bureau the authority to issue sub permits,” Slipher said. And, these sub-permits can be issued with no cost to members of the Indiana Farm Bureau.
“We’ve gone from states that had this program for a couple years, and Kentucky and Tennessee are in a different U.S. wildlife district. And they were doing some studying in our district," Slipher said.
They found Indiana livestock producers should have the capacity to get permits as well. Anyone interested in applying for a permit can click here.
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