What would nibble rock salt ?

Lots of them. Cattle, horses, and (I think) sheep. I wouldn't be surprised to find rodents nibbling them.

Lots! But in your instance possible pests include rats, mice and squirrels.

Maybe the animal was hoping for something tastier than salt?

Isn't that one of the reasons a dog licks your skin? For the salt you sweat out?

Ones that haven't heard that too much salt gives you high blood pressure.

Rodent bedding material

Definitely not first three :)

Seems a consensus for rodents then ... oh well hardly surprising with the bins not emptied for 2 months.

I've had mice nibble a big hole in a cardboard slug pellet container.

Why not sheep?

Have seen them myself wandering down streets in Mallaig no doubt other Scottish 'villages/towns' are the same

Deer. In Michigan, and probably other States, they are sold as deer-attracting items.

Interestingly a wild deer foal (?) managed to get it's head stuck in some school railings earlier this year. Fire brigade had to be called to release it.

This is in Quinton, Birmingham ... so there must be some wild deer nearby in the sticks ?

Wasn't there a statistic that there are now more deer in the UK than ever before ?

None anyway near his salt??

I don't the mineral blocks made for animals are pure salt.

They are a mixture of trace elements needed to supplement poor upland grazing, or to make sure lactating dairy cows get enough magnesium. I think the whole block has molasses to bind it all together.

Cows short of magnesium just flop down and you have to be really quick to notice and give it some IV fluids to boost its Mg levels. Then they just heave up onto their feet and wander off as though nothing had happened.

My neighbour hit a deer with his Ford Fiesta near Parham, Storrington. This is the 3rd time in recent years that I have heard of this happening.

Car came of quite badly; not sure about dear deer.

They don't seem to understand the green cross code.

One charges acorss head down, a bit a like a cat crossing a road, then the rest of the herd thunder across behind, wildebeest fashion. They don't seem to be put off by car headlamps at all.

Local farmer grew aparagus for a few years but even with a 6 foot high square mesh fence strained with robust posts, they still managed to get in, so he gave up.

It's quite an eye-opener, the damage that can be done. In another country, my Dad managed to write off a car hitting a pig.

A friend of mine who used to live near Lakenheath was limited by his car insurance company to two pheasant accident claims per year. Then one year he hit a deer, which came in through the windscreen. Once he had cleared the mess, he drove to his local butcher, and had the deer processed. I'm not sure that was 100% legal, but hey, this is out in the sticks. I think the insurance company paid for that one, reluctantly. I once hit a deer on the freeway in Indiana, at night. It shot off back into the fields, leaving tufts of fur behind, my car suddenly 'bonged' that I had a headlight failure, so I turned to dipped beams, and got the same result. Luckily, the fog lights still worked, and kept me legal. The whole front clip, lights and all, needed to be replaced, and they replaced the whole bonnet instead of trying to bash it back into shape. Quite expensive, for the insurance company. Standard advice re: deer in the US is: If you see one, there are more behind it.