Badgers

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Myrkk
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A few weeks ago a badger started visiting our garden. It was gorgeous to see. It was last in the garden around 8.45pm last Monday and disappeared off when I went to get some fuel for the fire. Around 4am on that night/morning I was woken up by lots of screaming (animal screams) from the woodland across the road from me, Mr/s Badger hasn't been seen since.

Is there anything other than a human that could have killed a badger? I feel sick that someone around here could have killed it but find it strange that it hasn't come back to our garden in the last week when it was coming in every other night or so.
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peter
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Sadly badgers feature very high on the roadkill statistics, "your" badger has probably been run over.

Animal screaming, probably amorous or fighting foxes.
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Primrose
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Certainly foxes are renouned for their screaming, but I thought this normally mostly occurred during mating time which was normally during the winter months. I think, because of the drought and the fact that badgers eat a lot of worms as part of their normal diet, they're having to forage further afield than normal to avoid starvation and this is why you may have seen your badger more regularly. Possibly the screams you may have heard may have been an animal invading another's territory and which has been scared off. Possibly that animal was the one that was visiting you. Of course, it could sadly have been killed in a road accident.

We do occasionally see badgers which visit us from a set a few hundred yards from our house but normally only when the weather is very dry and they're forced to hunt further afield for food. You may find it coming back in which case, putting putting out peanuts, chopped wrinkled apples and some drinking water might help, as well as having a patch of damp soil where it can forage for worms.
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alan refail
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It's also possible that it was visiting to check out your chickens as a future meal :( :(
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We dont' have any chooks at the mo. courtesy of the locals dogs :evil: but I was concerned about the extra security that was going to be needed when we get our next bunch which I'm hoping to do in August.

The screaming was just one animal and went on for around 15secs or so, could have been shorter, but it chilled my blood. The locals here have previous for badger baiting from what I've been told by the ex-wife of one hence my first unpleasant thought.

I'm taking some comfort in the thought that now it's been a bit wetter it's natural foraging ground is more appealing. Each time it was in our garden it was under the bird feeder industriously vaccuuming up the spilt bird food and peanuts. So intense was it's feeding that it didn't notice me getting just 7foot away from it with the video camera.
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Primrose
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The other thought which occurred to me about the screaming animal was possibly it could have been a rabbit caught by a fox. My parents had a large garden where rabbits often visited. We were awoken one night by the most horrendous screaming and rushed into the garden with torches and, found a rabbit firmly encased in the jaws of a fox. Not ever previously having had much to do with rabbits I'd never heard them make much noise, but this night I'm pretty sure that was where the screaming came from.
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glallotments
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Rabbits do have blood curdling screams.
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Johnboy
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Hi Myrrk,
You are probably correct with the screaming as Badgers fight and they make an awful screaming noise whilst they are fighting. I know because we have two opposing setts that regularly fight up and down the road outside my house and I have known that go on for hours at a time.
I have even driven my car at them and they simply move aside and carry on fighting. At times the noise is blood curdling!
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We have a badger that visits our garden but it doesn't do so every night. Sometimes it doesn't come around for ages. We know when it has been because it always turns the bird table over to get at the food.

We've just had to erect fences and put gates up though to try and stop it visiting at all because we've just started to keep chickens
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I am glad it rained because now hopefully the badgers will go to their normal
feeding areas, a badger got in during the dry weather and had a field day digging on my no-dig mulched beds which are full of juicy worms, luckily it missed the plants. I blocked off the entrance and so far it hasn't returned.
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Primrose
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We do very occasionally get badgers - albino ones - in our front garden, There is a set of them in our vicinity. We mostly only see them in dry conditions when they tend to forage further afield, I have half a border in the front garden where I recently dug out some dying shrubs, I'm leaving it fallow for the rest of this year, watering it and digging in my kitchen compost scraps in the hope that it will encourage some worms to return and provide some productive foraging for them.
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Apparently a recent survey suggests that two-thirds of the population oppose a Badger cull to eradicate Bovine T.B. which costs the Country £100million a year,let alone the stress on the Farmer every time his cattle are tested.It can been seen in the face and demeanour of Adam in the programme Countryfile when he calls in the vet to test his herds.
Regards snooky

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Johnboy
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Hi Snooky,
This is because the Badger Huggers keep on playing the Arrrgh factor.
Those 66% simply have no idea what they are capable of.
In truth they are exceedingly mean animals and a bloody nuisance most of the time. Because they have no predator other than man they have got out of control and it is time for a cull of quite high proportions.
I have a sett behind my property and they used to reek havoc on the nursery. Broken fences and up rooted plants especially in the vegetable garden up rooted Carrots and Parsnips and what annoyed me only half eaten and discarded. I was tempted to shoot a couple and had the gun out several times but I never did.
In the end we used Peanuts to guide them away from the fences and once they had established walking the way the Peanuts were trailed that became their path. End of Peanuts!
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darkbrowneggs
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Myrkk wrote:A few weeks ago a badger started visiting our garden. It was gorgeous to see. It was last in the garden around 8.45pm last Monday and disappeared off when I went to get some fuel for the fire. Around 4am on that night/morning I was woken up by lots of screaming (animal screams) from the woodland across the road from me, Mr/s Badger hasn't been seen since.

Is there anything other than a human that could have killed a badger? I feel sick that someone around here could have killed it but find it strange that it hasn't come back to our garden in the last week when it was coming in every other night or so.


Hi there - Do you have any hedgehogs around your area?

Badgers will eat them whenever they come across them, and when they do the screaming noise made by the hedgehog is very distressing to hear

all the best
Sue
yummyveggies
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grrrrr.... a badger dug out a bumble bee nest in our orchard.... no more bumble bees
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