[juliem]

I rent a few fields out to someone local and keep an eye on them for him.
This afternoon I noted a hoggett which was on it's own lying on the ground next to a fence where a busy main road is..When I approached it..it was in some distress(assumed it was dead or dying..most of my experience is of sheep dying of flystrike).Got on the phone and the owner came out straight away..took it back with him to his home and apparently he's quite hopeful as it's now on it's feet (tonight anyway.)
However my question  is that something had been pulling it's wool out whilst it was on the ground. As it was on the corner of the field where badgers cross over nightly to an area of woodland....would they be the culprits and can they cause the sheep any harm ? There is also a buzzard close by..could this have been the culprit.
Not sure how long the sheep had been lying on the ground.
Rest of the flock..40 plus are fine.

[waterbuffalofarmer]

Not sure..... I know badgers are capable of almost anything. My first thought would have ben of stray dogs in the area? Only way to find out would be to put wildlife camera's up to see

[henchard]

Yes badgers can, see

http://blog.tarset.co.uk/2010/07/kessing.html

[juliem]

Must be badgers some of the pictures pretty gruesome....makes me want to sort these badgers out.Not helped by my neighbour who is building a holiday cottage with viewing platform for them.My son did manage to hit one with his car (accidentally at night coming down our lane) but they can do a lot of damage to cars.

[SallyintNorth]

Badgers typically leave the spine and the fleece/skin, inside out, of lambs that they take.  They used to pick off the lambs that were struggling, up to about weanling stage, when I was on the moorland farm. 

I can't say I've any definite experience of them taking hoggets, but I've no doubt they would take a punt at one that couldn't defend itself.

[Fleecewife]

Corvids love helping themselves to wool, plucking it from the back end of sheep.  Maybe she was down already and they would have progressed to eyes etc next.  I have no experience of badgers.

[Dogwalker]

Crows will pull wool from a living , standing sheep but I've only seen it in spring.
They'll strip a carcass pretty fast.

[Talana]

There has been many people who have had to put sheep to sleep after badger ate them alive. Badgers often eat the udder area , ewes that get cast overnight at high risk from badgers. they have also been known to take lambs. I have heard of someone who had a cow who went down overnight in the morning the farmer discovered it had gone down but badgers had eaten it's udder area.
A friend of mine when to see his sheep in the morning one had have a dozen badgers round it eating it alive. He managed to chase them off but had to put the ewe to sleep due to it's injury's. He said he had wished he had filmed it rather than running to chase them off.

[harmony]

If it was only wool I would suspect birds. Badgers want meat.

[regen]

Yes badgers can, see

http://blog.tarset.co.uk/2010/07/kessing.html

Could not see anything in the blog which proves badgers eat sheep alive -just unsubstantiated words and pictures which could be attributed to any predator. No badger proof, no live sheep proof!

The poster did not say that the sheep had been partially eaten, only that some wool had been pulled out and that the sheep was recovering from whatever ailed it.  Perhaps the badger was not very hungry! or possibly the culprit was a corvid testing to see how much life there was left in the sheep.

Just because there are badgers in the area does not mean that they will eat sheep.

In terms of danger to sheep I would put badgers well down the list after dogs,humans,foxes, corvids and big cats.

Regen

[Tim W]

Corvids are the largest problem for sheep here

But I have seen a badger take a young lamb (it was an old and rangy badger) & I have seen a badger eating at a cast ewe's udder
How often this happens I don't know but it does happen

[Marches Farmer]

I've seen this too.  Despite the gruff, but kindly, image badgers have due to Toad of Toad Hall they're red in tooth and claw and will eat anything from bumble bee nests to hedgehogs (in fact, the only predator of hedgehogs) so a nice, supine mammal would be a feast for them.  I have a field near a badger's sett where I wouldn't dream of putting lambs less than three months old.  A recent study carried out by Liverpool University of badgers in the Cheshire area found 24% carried bTB.  You can probably guess how I feel about badgers.

[Anke]

My sheep are kept in a field with a badger set right next to it, I can see the pathways the badgers (and foxes) make and also have to chase them off my lawn in the middle of the night... they are partial to spilled over layers pellets, plus of course worms etc... but I lamb outside and have my ewes with their lambs in that field from day one. Never lost a lamb to badger (hens are a different matter, especially if OH forgets to shut them in at night...)

I see crows on the ewes all the time... not just in spring.

However the ewe may have pulled her wool by rubbing against the fence.

Buzzards do not go for adult sheep, not even lambs. Again we have local ones and the hunt in the field all the time.

[juliem]

 Good news the hogget is fine now....consensus is it was weak anyway..couldn't get up and a badget/crows started to take an interest.

[EP90]

Sorry JulieM but unless you saw it happen its pure speculation.  Any creature mentioned in the posts could have been responsible and a few more beside, may even have done it itself if it was thrashing around against the fence.  Cameras after the event again will prove nothing.
  I fail to see why a neighbour building a viewing platform and you seeing a picture of a dead sheep that had been partly eaten, assumed to be a badger, would seem to incense you to “sort the badgers out” at your location.  Good news that the hogget is fine but any idea why it was down in the first place?