Within a few miles of most towns and cities you can be certain that our friends the badgers are not too far away. They live in their colonies along the well trodden 'badger paths' that have been in use for many, many years.
Badgers make their homes or 'setts' underground, usually in woodland or secluded ditches and hillsides. These areas generally provide them with their main diet of earthworms, slugs and small animals. They also eat fruit during the autumn and like to have access to drinking water.
Being creatures of the night, many people have never seen badgers in their natural habitat. They are very shy animals and the slightest noise sends them scurrying to their setts. They have no known enemies, only that of MAN. In the past few years they have been hunted and tortured in the name of 'sport'. There have been recently a few court cases and the fines are now very high, however people do still roam around to dig badgers.
The adult male badger is about a metre in length (excluding tail) and weighs about 11kgs. The weight can differ over the seasons.
Although they spend a lot of the daytime underground they are still very active. They have a large chamber that they use and spend time with cubs playing and helping to groom each other. If you are very quiet you can hear them . They have several chambers underground from their main tunnel, they have a nursery, a toilet and sleeping chambers.
The sett is kept very clean, no food is ever taken into the sett and fresh straw, hay or grass is taken down for bedding purposes. Each day at sunrise the female will take out all the straw and roll it into a ball at the sett entrance. It is left for a period to air in the sunshine, this allows the bugs and ticks to be removed. Just before sunset the bundles are returned into the sett. This practice carries on until the straw is too dirty for use, then the sow will scatter the old straw outside the sett and collect fresh to replace the old.
Despite having small ears, their hearing is most acute and their sense of smell is a great asset to them. Their eye-sight is not too good so they rely completely on their sense of smell and hearing.
Before coming out of their sett they stop and listen, they sniff the air and move their heads sideways and listen. If all is well, then the adults- will come out first and then call the cubs.
During the excavation of some large setts, about half a ton of soil can be removed, especially if two badgers are working together. Having already mentioned their small ears, another interesting fact is that when they are digging, their ears can turn inwards to close off the ear aperture - this stops soil from entering their ears. Likewise a small flap covers their nostrils. Their acute hearing allows them to hear small animals and earthworms below the ground surface before they dig for them.
Their breeding habits are unique. Although they mate throughout the year the small blastocysts are not implanted in the usual way but lie dormant within the cavity of the uterus, growing only a little. Around the first week in November the blastocysts will implant and nature takes over. Then usually around the end of February or into March all badgers are born and in April the young cubs will come above the ground. This means that if mating takes place early the pregnancy can take ten months or more, but if the mating takes place September/October then only four-five months. This is known as a delayed pregnancy.
In the Kibworth area there are many badger setts and if you know of any it would be wise to keep the location to yourself. There are lots of people today who dig for badgers to use them for sport. This means they dig them out, break their legs, remove their teeth, then put them into pits to fight with dogs. This is 'Sport'???
Early February I had a call from a lady that a badger was on the grass verge on the A6 entering Kibworth, apparently injured. On entering the village I saw the badger and, after parking my car, I made my way towards it only to find that it was not injured but was in fact eating daffodil bulbs! I got quite close to it before it ran off. I waited and, sure enough, the badger returned to continue with its' feast. Incidentally, I saw it there again within the same period on many occasions.
To finish the story I noticed when the daffodils came into bloom there was a large area quite bare of flowers. I often wondered if the people in the house nearby knew why.
Please remember it is an offence under The Badger Act, September 1993, to go equipped to dig for, or to attempt to dig, to be in the area of a sett to dig or to interfere with a badger sett ie. use dogs (terriers etc), to put poisonous liquids into a set, et
Penalties are very high fines of £1000 or more.
Should a person have a genuine problem with badgers, they should contact the Police who have a special section, together with the RSPCA and the Badger Group to obtain permission and move badgers by licence.
©Mr F Stocks of Great Glen
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© Kibworth & District Chronicle 1998