About Badgers

ABOUT BADGERS

The male badger is called a boar, the female a sow and their young cubs. After mating the fertilised egg is retained by the sow as a blastocyst until later it implants in her uterus.
Adult badgers average length is 76cm (30″) with 15cm (6″) tails. They weigh an average of 9 kilos (20lbs) in early Spring and 12 kilos (26lb) in late Autumn. Females are usually slightly smaller and lighter.

THE BADGER’S DIET

Although the badger’s favourite food is worms, the diet chart shows that badgers are omnivorous. They will eat anything they can reach or catch, be it alive or dead. The size of their feeding range depends on the density of worms in the soil. They generally need about 200 worms a night.
In ideal conditions there may be 100,000 worms per acre (0.4ha). In drier areas it will be less and the badgers will have to travel further afield to find enough food. In frosty or dry weather worms are driven down into the soil – out of the badger’s reach and they must turn to other sources of food.
Badgers have been known to forage over as much as 30 acres (12ha) in poor conditions. The shape and flexibility of a badger’s snout helps it to ‘hoover’ up worms from the grass. Badgers derive a lot of their water from juicy worms and the dew they imbibe with them but they need sources of water. If these dry up, the badgers are forced to roam further.

HOW BADGERS LIVE

Badgers live underground in a sett. They prefer well drained soil – holes at different levels improve ventilation. They will dig outlier holes nearby, often used by displaced males. Some areas show signs that badgers have probably used that location for hundreds of years.
Their holes average 25cm (10″) diameter and often show obvious signs of fresh digging. Look for their prints and lumps of chalk or clay scored by their strong claws. You may find hairs at the sett or caught in hedges or wire and see their well trodden paths and dome shaped holes under fences. Flies hovering around a hole often indicate that someone is at home.
Badgers dig flower pot shaped holes as latrines. These are often grouped along a hedge or path and can demarcate the edge of their territory. Bushes often spring up from the seeds of fruit they excrete. They will sometimes dedicate an area of their underground sett as a latrine.
Grass or leaves are dragged down into the sett as bedding. These may be taken out and aired from time to time and are generally discarded annually.
The only threats to badgers are man and dogs. Man destroys the badger’s habitat through development and changes of land use and will block setts and even indulge in badger-baiting.