Comments courtesy of Wendy Keefover-Ring at Sinapu (wendy@sinapu.org):

The article suggests that even in territories where sheep are abundant, coyotes (even breeders!) will not specialize on them.

This study was conducted in “Mediterranean conditions”--and the authors speculated that their results may not translate to dry desert habitat where prey is far more scarce.

Sheep were “either consumed in proportion to the amount of suitable habitat in a territory (deer, woodrat, brush rabbit) or there was no clear relationship (pocket gopher, vole). . . .A management implication of these finding is that predation on sheep in our study area could be minimized by concentrating sheep in as small an area as possible.”