Do wolves kill more animals than they can feed on when attacking livestock?

Yes, this can be the case with smaller livestock such as sheep and goats. As hunting and killing prey is laborious for wolves, they take the chance to kill more than one animal when possible, in order to build up a supply. In nature, this usually does not happen, as prey animals flee when an attack takes place e.g. on a herd of red deer, in which case usually only one animal - if at all - is killed. In contrast, a herd of sheep is a distinctively helpless group of prey for the wolf, as they do not have functioning strategies for fleeing or defending themselves. The lack of these strategies causes repeated hunting and killing behaviour in wolves.