deterring foxes

[Mike]

Same as with Foot and Mouth and other livestock diseases - to stop it potentially spreading. Whether this is the best policy is another argument of course - one you should take up with DEFRA, not me.

I've answered your incoherent comments as best as I can. Plus my argument has full weight of the law - your's doesn't !

There are few short-haired cows who can comfortably take a British winter. If you leave them out they suffer badly and lose many calves. Unless your daughter's herd was Angus or suchlike then she was opening herself to prosecution anyway.

Did she supplement their feed in winter using a feeding trough ? If she did the badgers will have walked in it, if she didn't she'd have starving cows.

I would gladly seek a prosecution of you if you did either now. They are a protected species and idiots like you harassing them deserve the full weight of the law on your backs.

No animal is as dirty as humans, except possibly rats. Badgers are vicious but only to escape.

[Mike]

Only by overly close contact with the cow !! And even then it is not transmissible to other humans.

[Andrew McKay]

That's for sure. They have very sharp teeth.

I remember hand-feeding several wild badgers when I was in my young teens. We lived close to a large woods and the lady up the road backed onto the woods, and each night fed them by leaning thru the window at the end of her garage.

They were quite timid, but you got the impression that you wouldn't want to mess with them.

Andrew

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[Howard Neil]

Since you now admit that humans can catch it and that you were wrong, I think you owe Mary an apology for calling her silly.

Just to remind you. You said

"Don't know about the wasps but please don't denigrate the badger which does a lot of good for the countryside. The only disease it spreads is bovine TB which only affects cattle."

Mary said "And thence humans."

You then said "Don't be silly. Bovine TB and human TB are totally different diseases."

[Mike]

No I don't. It cannot spread to the general human population which was what she was implying. A person having intimate (and I really do mean intimate) contact with an infected cow might catch it but cannot pass it on to other humans so there is no general danger to the general public. This is the same with most animal diseases, even currently the bird flu we are worrying about so much in Asia, though of course this has previously changed into a human transmissible disease at least twice in history so there is something to worry about there.

It is alarmist comments such as those from Mary that lead idiots to kill badgers illegally which then leads to the disease spreading through the countryside as other badgers move in to those freed up areas. Farmers here have worked hard to keep our area part of the county clean of animal diseases for many years but it just takes a bit of idiocy to damage this forever.

[Howard Neil]

She did not say that and I cannot see where you get that implication from. I think you have just jumped to conclusions and that attitude makes me doubt the wisdom of everything else you write.

[Mike]

That's entirely up to you. But just don't killing any protected species.

[Howard Neil]

I don't understand the second sentence.

[Sue]

In message , Mary Fisher writes

Can you name the species you think are common?

I can guarantee they won't react to me walking up to a nest I know is there. I've done it often enough. Wasps try to hide their nests, they've nothing to gain by unprovoked attacks on passing cattle (which do make the ground vibrate).

Of course they get it wrong sometimes: I was stung in the foot when I accidentally stood on the entrance hole of a nest, but since it was in our orchard their mistake was maladaptive.

It's their reaction to having their nest disturbed - they'd do the same if you puffed talcum powder into it. The insecticides suitable for this job take several hours to have any effect at all, as is obvious when the fuss dies down and the wasps resume normal activity. Most of them will have died by the following morning though.

Eating fruit is their main ecological niche. Their population builds slowly until late summer, then they produce lots more workers and their queens and drones while food is briefly plentiful.

What did you think they were doing chewing their way into a plum or an apple? They didn't evolve on a diet of leftover cola and sugar icing!

So as to have some fruit fit to store.

And what exactly was the study?

That's in all the books and I've even seen it, though rarely. I wonder if the books' authors were confusing them with the tiny parasitic wasps whose impact is significant.

Lets have some verifiable information from you then.

[Sue]

No, you wouldn't.

The reason badger baiting was considered worthwhile as a sport, was that one badger against several dogs was a fairly even match.

It seems to be more of a claws than a teeth thing. Next time you find a reasonably fresh roadkill badger, check it over. I've never seen them fight, but the reason you put little doors into fences across their trails is that they uproot solidly-built fences with a single heave of their shoulders. That strength is behind their claws when they fight.

As for human-like behaviour, there was a pub in a Welsh mining valley where every Saturday lunchtime a badger would show up, the regulars would give it half a pint of beer and a packet of crisps and it'd go home again. When someone followed it home they found it was walking eleven miles to the pub and eleven miles back. You'd think it'd brew its own cider and save the trouble, but probably the wasps'd had all the fruit!

[Mike]

Their rear legs are incredibly powerful. I've seen one corner a fox and kick it almost to death with them.

When two males compete for territory, they will spit at each other and swipe at each other with their front claws, but all the time they are looking for the opportunity to turn and kick with the back legs without getting kicked in the bum themselves.