Well this morning as I drove over to see one of my puppies(she's not a puppy now lol) I saw two badgers dead by the side of the road plus a fox and a hedgehog all within half a mile of each other. They are "country" roads and are unlit but even so in all the yrs I have been driving I've never hit anything,it just makes me cross that people have no thought for our wildlife.

Kind Regards

It's a regular sight further south from you, where the badger population is thickest.  Many get hit at night, as they are more likely to be about then.  Don't ever touch a dead badger, as it is highly likely that it has Bovine TB.  Transmittable to humans.

Poor things. Over on Cannock Chase Deer are hit and killed quite often. In the past there has been news coverage asking people to slow down and be aware that wildlife does cross the roads. Surely there must be damage to the car when they hit them? Even if they dont care about the animals surely they dont want their cars dented?
Is Bovine TB widespread? I know there has been uproar at the last planned cull where opponents of the cull argued that culling badgers was not neccasary.

Kind Regards

If you've hit a badger you'd know about it, like deer they cause a lot of damage to cars.
We get them around here, and sometimes find them at the side of the road. The other thing to be careful of is if the badger is still alive then they can be very vicious towards humans, more so when injured, so take care.

Foxes and rabbits are a common sight as road kill around here - south east

in the village that i used to live the local police sarg told me that a lot of the badgers you see on the side of the road have been "Planted" by people that badger bait and put on the side of the road to make it look like road kill.

My vet also backed this up saying the injuries a lot of them have are from being baited not hit by a vehicle.

:(

> Don't ever touch a dead badger, as it is highly likely that it has Bovine TB.  Transmittable to humans

Having heard on local radio of a badger hit on a Friday night and found still alive Sunday morning, I have always stopped to make sure they are dead. Pair of think leather gloves and a long stick carried in the car.  OH and others think I'm nuts (no comments please) but can not drive passed if their is a chance they are still suffering.

> Is Bovine TB widespread?

Extremely

The clue is in the name ie BOVINE T.B.  Healthy, well-kept herds do not develop t.b. even in close proximity to badgers. BOVINE t.b. will have been caught by badgers FROM cows. The badgers are then getting the blame and the big killing, thanks to the government. Certainly I would be suspicious of groups of dead badgers & foxes. They are almost certainly illegally killed & then discarded. Badgers are killed for FUN remember.

I have heard that badgers are killed by farners and out on the roads to look like road kill!!!
But then around me there is always badgers dead on the road. And as they travel MILES at night there is no wonder some are killed with all the fast roads around here/
Also, someone who is in the know, has said they are not as uncommon and endangered as they are made out to be!!!
I to have stopped to see if badgers are dead. At work we have empty ton bags that carry agregates, if we found one I would put one of them round it and take it to the vets!!!! LOL
Lea :)

> Don't ever touch a dead badger, as it is highly likely that it has Bovine TB.  Transmittable to humans.

Most of us are vaccinated against TB though - as in the BCG vaccination I had at secondary school. It covers bovine TB as well, as that is/was the most common source of infection (from infected milk). Quite a few of the kids at my school, in a prominent dairy farming area, didn't need the vaccination as they showed they had already developed TB antibodies.

so what are you suggesting they should do Lorraine? take them home and bury them??? I dont understand what you are saying. people hit wildlife all the time, ive hit several badgers and believe me , no one potters along more carefully in my old landrover, but if they run out of a gate or hedge theres nothing you can do!

Grets, ive never read such utter bigotted unfactual rubbish!!! Our herd has been tested as TB  carrying and  to accuse us of not having a healthy well kept herd is a damned insult, how dare you. :( :( Bring on the cull!!!!

> so what are you suggesting they should do Lorraine? take them home and bury them???

I'm not sugesting you should do anything. I was merely pointing out the carnage I drove past this morning. I may just add that I have had deer run out in front of me many times but I have never even come close to hitting them. Badgers may well be a cause of TB in cattle but they along with foxes,rabbits,hedgehogs and deer still dont deserve to end up as roadkill. I have witnessed idiot drivers actually aiming their cars at them (mainly rabbits) why? for some sort of sick fun?

Kind Regards

im sure no one (other than the badly informed and bigotted g rets) was suggesting anyone runs over badgers on purpose. However when they run straight under your wheels there is litle you can do.

> take them home and bury them???

No. but if it or any other wild life on the roadside was still alive I would have to deal with it, could not leave it in pain. If dead, ring highways to collect.

I once had a pheasant pop out infront of me in a small country lane,well the silly bird could have got out of the road at any time but it chose to run as fast as it could up the road and kept looking back at me to see if I was still behind it!!! I was still laughing about it when I pulled up at my friends house 10mins later. And no I didnt run it over! It finally dived into a field.

Kind Regards

Grets was at no point suggesting anyone runs over a badger, not sure where that has come from?

Anyway just spoken to a family member who is a farmer of cattle as I was interested about the passing of TB from Badgers which is on this thread.
They stated that it is 99% proven that badgers pass it to cattle, Cattle are tested and if affected or carriers are culled :-(. Badgers aren't tested but they do carry and they defecate in grass where cattle eat. I asked about the likely hood of rabbits and foxes having it and passing it on as they also defecate in grass too(appears not the same strain of TB), and don't we dog owners know about that ;-)
http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/abouttb/badgers.htm
So basically we can't get the cattle under control with this until badgers are under control with it..Badgers aren't tested so how will this ever end?

> Grets, ive never read such utter bigotted unfactual rubbish!!! Our herd has been tested as TB  carrying and  to accuse us of not having a healthy well kept herd is a damned insult, how dare you. :-( :-( Bring on the cull!!!!

Shouldn't get involved, but have to agree 150% with this post.  Grets, if you saw as many devastated farmers as I do, you would realise that you are way off the mark.  And Bovine TB isn't just about cows for crying out loud.  Deer are huge carriers of the disease.

Because humans can catch Bird Flu, you don't say it is them giving it to the birds.  You are assuming too much.  And your post is insulting to the greater majority of farming folk.

G.Rets - do you have any contact with people who keep cattle? I would assume not from your comments!

I keep a herd of Dexter cattle, not a huge herd, only a total of around 50 animals including calves. We are in Devon, a county affected badly by TB. We have now been moved to yearly whole herd testing. My herd were last tested in December 2008 and we are due to be done next month. You can have no idea of the stress involved. Do you know what happens at a TB test? The whole herd have to be injected one by one by the vet, then 3 days later the vet comes back and inspects every animal to see if they have had a reaction. If they react they will be taken away and killed. Can you imagine what it is like to wait for the all clear for your cared for animals? 

We are very careful - we do not keep buying in animals who may bring diseases with them. We keep females that we breed ourselves, we don't buy in replacements. We purchased a replacement bull earlier this year - we had to as we had kept the daughters of our old bull, so he had to move on to pastures new. Before the bull came, he had to have a TB test. I have sold some animals (and believe me, I am careful who I sell to!) and they have to be tested before they move. We run an organic farm so we are inspected every year by the Soil Association. Every year up until now, the condition of our animals has been graded as excellent. This year we were awarded an "Outstanding". I just wish you were right in your assertion that healthy, well-kept herds didn't get TB because then I wouldn't have to worry. But worry I will when they are tested!

I think that when people live in big towns or cities they don't see the problems of the country in quite the same way that people living there do.  I don't want to get into a big debate regarding fox law but where I live I see the carnage caused by a high population and possibly not quite the same seen if I lived in a town etc.  My heart went out to farmers last week when my pigs were due to go to the abbatoir but were cancelled as DEFRA had sent in a large number of TB reactors to be slaughtered, yes inconvienient for me but nothing compared to how the farmers must have felt.  There are days when I feel that people living in the towns should leave the countryside to country folk after all it has been managed perfectly well by them for centuries.

Just a point about tb vaccination. It is not done routinely in schools any more If you want your child vaccinated you have to go to your own gp. I believe certain at risk groups are still vacinated.
My daughter hit a badger last month at night running straight out of the woods fortunately it died immediately , they went back to check not sure how they would have dealt with it if still alive though. luckliy for her the car was not damaged. they were very shaken up by the whole thing
Some years ago my oh driving through the ashdown forest hit a deer that too died immediatly but the damage to the car was immense.

I think my family need warning signs on them to the wildlife given that records. !  

I think you could be right Norman being a townie myself I dont think most of us have a clue

> Most of us are vaccinated against TB though - as in the BCG vaccination I had at secondary school.

No vaccination that i am aware of  lasts for ever , i was told at a training course for human vaccinations that the BCG vaccination is generally thought to last about 10 years , but each person is an individual and so it depends upon the immune response your body makes. I had my BCG at birth and when i went with my classmates to be tested at around 13 years of age my vaccination was still working.

The BCG is now mostly only given to children thought to be at risk , ie those with parents or grandparents born in certain countries. It is also routinely given at birth to those who live in high-risk areas , where there is a high incidence in the community. You can also get it as a travel vaccination if you are travelling to a high risk area , or pay to have it privately.

I've come close to hitting both a deer and a badger that jumped out in front of my car, but managed to avoid them luckily.

> So basically we can't get the cattle under control with this until badgers are under control with it..Badgers aren't tested so how will this ever end?

Why not vaccinate the cattle???  Maybe because it is cheaper to kill the Badgers?

There isn't a vaccine right now, here is a link for how they are working on one not just for cattle but for badgers too. Also to note this is a problem in America and they too are working on getting a vaccine.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/research/vaccine.htm

Surely if there is a human vaccine it can't be that different/difficult.

Taken from The Guardian.

The disease was almost eradicated from the national herd in the 1980s but there has been a dramatic resurgence since, with cases rising 14% year on year. The disease cost the taxpayer £80m last year in compensation paid to farmers.

The reason for the increase is unclear, but some experts believe that moves towards keeping cattle in confined spaces have exacerbated the spread of the disease. Another theory is that badger conservation efforts have helped to spread it because badgers harbour the disease before passing it on to cattle.

For the vaccine to be useful to farmers, it needs to overcome two hurdles. The first is that it must be effective against different strains of Mycobacterium bovis which cause TB. In Britain, 10 different strains account for 90% of bovine TB, with each strain being prominent in a particular region. Most of the disease is found in the west and south-west of Britain.

HTH

Here is something on vaccinating badgers in glos, so there must be a vaccine? http://www.fera.defra.gov.uk/wildlife/ecologyManagement/bvdp

Looks like it is a study, from the small area its covering, but if it works, wow, that will be amazing.. Here is to hoping. Not sure how long they have to check the badger after vaccination to confirm its working and wonder how long the vaccine lasts for?
Be an interesting one to keep tabs of, thanks Brainless

Looks hopeful.  We have to devise a way to share our world with the wildlife.

Culling badgers is not the answer. This study explains it better than I could:

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_10-2-2010-10-44-17

I cannot imagine the pain of having your herd slaughtered. Unbearable.

We have to devise a way to share our world with the wildlife.

I could not have worded it any better than this :)

> Why not vaccinate the cattle???

All to do with the fact that animals that are vaccinted, cannot go for human consumption.

but these are dairy cattle so won't go for eating for a long time.

there is a vaccination for badgers they where going to cull badgers in a region of wales but this was stopped and now the badgers are being vaccinated.

i had to stand and watch my friend be told that two of his cows out of the 5 he has had a reaction to the tb vac they had the lumps on the neck that where measured and where huge , when they told him he just turned away and walked away crying to see a hulk of a farmer break down like this was hugely upsetting for us all as the cows he have are classed as a rare breed and one was due to calf i do not think he has really got over this , we thought he would of by now bought some more in but no he said he can't keep going through this every few months.

He has badgers on his land and he says they have every right to be there but he wants the vaccine to be brought out all over the country and not just in certain areas as it is being done now

> i had to stand and watch my friend be told that two of his cows out of the 5 he has had a reaction to the tb vac

Oh how awful for him and indeed anyone faced with having their stock slaughtered. It's about time badgers were vaccinated against TB and our government should be hanging their heads in shame for not getting this disease under control yrs ago.

Kind Regards

This may be a daft question but if badgers give cattle TB what gives it to the badgers?

Kind Regards

After all it's nothing compared to the logistics of vaccinating of wildlife in Europe for Rabies.

It's actually pretty controversial the whole badger/cattle debate Roscoe. On the farming side, they claim the badgers are the "reservoir" spreading bTB to the cattle. On the other side, they claim the cattle are the reservoir spreading bTB to other mammals (mice, rats, badgers, deer etc). They claim that badgers are at more risk from catching bTB from cattle due to their eating habits (scavenging through dung for insects). Flip side of that is that badgers urinate on the grass cattle eat.

Either way, bTB exists and is spread because some animals act as "reservoirs" :)

Personally, I don't think it particularly matters which animal is spreading it to who and can't see how that can ever be ascertained (although I am certainly not well-read on this subject). What's important is how it can be controlled :)

This may be a daft question but if badgers give cattle TB what gives it to the badgers

This is actually a really important question. Badgers are part of a chain--culling them may affect transmission in the short term, though this is not certain, but there is every chance that the disease will be able to jump from other species affected, and then what do we do? It's the ecology of disease that is critical, not just eliminating a carrier.

I've been looking for a study involving an organic dairy farm surrounded by badgers--with no sign of the disease in their cattle, despite neighboring farms being affected--but can't find it (it was published in The Guardian last year, can anyone remember rading this?). The premise was that it wasn't a simple case of infection, but that there were other issues involved, such as chemicals in feed, treating pastureland, etc. which can predispose cattle to infection. 

I am sorry to see personal attacks in this thread. I hope we can maintain a discussion and consider other viewpoints without getting caught up in stereotypes and dismissiveness.

> Badgers are part of a chain--culling them may affect transmission in the short term, though this is not certain, but there is every chance that the disease will be able to jump from other species affected, and then what do we do? It's the ecology of disease that is critical, not just eliminating a carrier.
>
>

Thank you for a very good response Jay15. I did think that there had to be other factors involved in the transmission of this disease and yes I think you are right,until TB is understood farmers are going to face the heartbreak of slaughtering their stock and badgers will continue to be culled.

Kind Regards