[Buttermilk]

Badgers made a mess of some of our beehives, they knocked/pushed them over to get in and eat the honey and brood.

[verdifish]

Where are you?  It could be red dear as it is rutting time!

[Marches Farmer]

In principal I don't object to resident badgers, and they're welcome to any mushrooms, beetles or anything like that; I've even got around my fox problem by installing herris fencing around the chickens rather than get rid of mr fox; but if the badgers can wreck a 1/5 acre of pasture in just a few nights they're going to exhaust my tolerance in record time.

They'll probably be youngsters digging for earthworms.  Badgers will happily travel three miles in a night.  They excrete bTB through urine, faeces, sputum, pus from fighting wounds ....  In the right damp, dark conditions the bTB can stay active for months. They will eat hedgehogs, ground nesting birds, chickens, newborn lambs, udders of downer cows.  They have spread bTB to dogs, cats, alpacas, stoats, weasels, deer and humans.  I have no objection whatsoever to badgers, I just want healthy ones.  The most annoying thing is that I find them emaciated and too weak to hunt lying under the hedge in early Spring but I'm not even allowed to put them out of their misery.

[waterbuffalofarmer]

it could be someone looking for treasure 

[Cosmore]

it could be someone looking for treasure 

Or wild boar truffle hunting, you could be sitting on a goldmine  .

Can't quite get to grips with the badger protection thing....other species that overpopulate are regularly culled to keep the numbers down to a reasonable level, i.e. rats, foxes, deer, wild boar, pigeons and rabbits, nobody starts jumping up and down about that, so whats so special about a destuctive and diseased predator such as the badger, that cannot be put out of its misery even when it's terminally suffering?
Here there are so many that hardly a couple of days goes past when I see yet another badger dead on the roadside having been hit by a vehicle, I know for a fact that many are killed on the local railways despite having had special tunnels under the tracks built for them and gaps left in the electrified third rail where their traditional paths are - nobody comments on these deaths.  .

[Sbom]

A pony that was trained to deter/chase badgers could be worth an awful lot of money  I know a good few farmers who'd love one!!
Obviously in a safe and humane way.......

Badgers root the fields here dreadfully so I'd say badgers or wild boar?

[Me]

http://orig09.deviantart.net/2d6b/f/2011/253/1/2/apple_boom_by_contrail09-d49esv2.jpg

One of these?

[sabrina]

I get that on my hill paddocks and its badgers. they dig anything from a wee hole to a huge area. Dig up the bubble bees who nest in the ground. Eat eggs and young chicks from ground nesting birds, I hate them. One took the skin of the side of one of my Shetland ponies face when he got too close. Pony was just a yearling, poor lad got a right fright and needed the vet who said this was happening more and more.

[mab]

I'm fairly sure it's not red deer here (I've lived near red deer before and I'd probably hear if they were rutting anywhere near). no evidence of hoofprints at the 'crime scene' which is why i'm thinking not wild boar either - just the odd paw print. don't know if stock fencing would stop either species.

went out 6 times last night on patrol - the dog did chase something back under cover early on but I didn't see what.

spend an hour this am unrolling the turfes and trying to replace them on the bare patches - actually worked surprisingly well; a lot of the torn  up turf was on top of undamaged grass and now it's more or less back in place the field looks a lot better. but I do wonder what the chances of the turfes staying put and growing are.

[regen]

Most likely badgers and usually happens around this time every year and continues for a few weeks before they move on. Youngsters looking for worms. Other possibilty is rooks but they tend to pull out small tufts rather than actual lumps of sward. Last year they had a go at 2 different fields damaging about 1 acre before moving on.  By spring ours has always recovered without any intervention.

Resourceful and intelligent mammals which have managed to survive in spite of mans worst efforts ranging from  sheer brutality through to the excesses of modern farming practices.

Regen

[Ghdp]

Heck. I was about to post a similar query about torn up turf but the new holes in the field that I also found were round and not like an D on its side like it said on an internet search so i thought it might be foxes?? Do they rip up turf??

[Bramblecot]

Invest in a cheap trail camera.  It is so much easier than staying out all night seeing what (or who) is visiting your fields

[Buffy the eggs layer]

It looks like chaffer infestation to me. The grass is clearly dead. If it was just up rooted and flipped over I would expect it to still be alive especially in such damp conditions. There has been gazilions of chaffer this year and despite spraying twice they have taken out alot of my pasture again this year. The beetle lays its eggs in the soil. Preferably sandy soils as its warmer and lighter. Then the grub hatches and crawls along the about an inch or so below ground eating through all the grass roots and killing the grass.


Birds and animals will root out the bugs particularly crows and starlings and in the process you will find the dead grass lifted out. If you live in a mild part of the country they may still be some late hatching ones that havent yet been eaten or burrowed deeper to survive the winter. If you take a trowel and dig 2 or 3 inched down in the ground around the dead patch you might still find some.


They will look like a big fat maggot but with a dark stripe along their back. They will be laid on their side in a "C" shape and only have a couple of pairs of legs near their head.


Any surviving ones will emerge as flying bugs in May and the whole process will start again.

[verdifish]

Pee all around the area, this should stop it happening in the future.

[Me]