My Trail Cameras (Part 2)

A few weeks ago I wrote about my two camera traps and I thought that I would write another post as I have caught a lot of footage in it in the last few weeks, Including Badgers, Deer, Foxes and Pheasants.

I recently moved both of my cameras to a wood that is on the other side of one of our fields and that we do not actually own. I didn't expect to find much on the first day because I hadn't placed any bait in front of the camera. The next day when I checked I was surprised to find a video of a mother Roe deer and her two fawns and two badgers.

                                     

Bait:

My favourite type of bait for badgers is apples as they absolutely love them if you squish them with your boot, (I was told that the best bait for badgers was peanuts but I find this attracts mice and birds and it can be annoying when I get 300 videos of the same mouse in 1 night).



My favourite type of bait for foxes is peanut butter as they absolutely love it, I smother it on a branch or twig and they will stay there for a long time eating it.

My deer don't really have a favourite bait but if I put out some hay and apples then they can smell it from a long distance but for some reason they don't tend to eat it.

The Badger Cull

As many of you will know the badger cull has recently restarted in Gloucester and Somerset. They are estimated to kill over 1,000 badgers in an effort to tackle the disease bTB (Bovine Tuberculosis) in cattle, which caused 26,000 cows to be slaughtered in England last year! 

It is though, that the cull is not scientifically proven to reduce the spread of the disease so could mean that 1,000 badgers are killed for no reason, this upsets me a lot. 

Badgers are often blamed for the spread but almost any plant eating mammals transmit too (EG. Deer, Sheep and Pigs). The reason that badgers are blamed though, is due to the fact that they are found to cross graze with cattle. The infected badgers dig for earthworms in the cows field and spread the disease on to the grass, the cattle will then eat this grass and catch the disease, later this is then spread to the whole herd, eventually causing the whole lot to be slaughtered. 

It is estimated that the cull will cost £1,000 pounds for every badger killed (Meaning that the whole cull will cost £1.2m of the tax payers money), whereas it only costs £850 for the badgers to be cage trapped and given a vaccination. 

Last year out of the 600 badgers shot only a handful of them were infected with bTB, and 50% of them took longer than five minutes to die, quite inhumane in my view!

If you are interested in helping the badger cull then you can sign a petition at: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop-the-badger-cull

Two Fallow Fawns

Today was a great discovery... We discovered a new breed of deer (Fallow deer), we did not even realise that they lived in bedgebury forest as we have only ever seen roe deer.