How to discourage unwanted badger attention to your garden

In gardens badgers may damage fences, dig up lawns, turn over dustbins, climb fruit trees or break their lower branches to obtain cherries, apples, pears or plums. Badgers are also very partial to soft fruit crops, particularly strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries, and to certain vegetables. They may raid new potato crops, dig up carrots and damage sweet corn.

However, it is unlikely that badgers digging in gardens would ever be considered to be causing serious economic damage for which a licence to kill or ‘move’ badgers would be granted.

Badger photograph copyright Ralph Hart

Please do remember that:

• Badgers are wild animals
• Badgers are a protected species under English law, and it is therefore advisable to seek suitable advice on how to deal with any badger-related problems
• Drastic or ill-advised measures could make things worse
• Every situation tends to be different, so each problem needs to be looked at carefully
• Often simply being patient may turn out to be the best answer
• Specialist advice or a licence may be needed in interfering with badgers’ setts, even if they appear unoccupied

Badger latrines

Badgers are mustelids, close relatives of otters and stoats, and use their droppings with special scent (musk) glands to mark their territories to communicate with other badgers. 

A latrine consists of several pits about 15 centimetres deep, some of which will contain faeces.  The area of ground surrounding a latrine is frequently scraped up.  These may be dug in lawns or flowerbeds and it is this activity that gardeners object to.

Badger latrine. Photograph copyright John Crouch.

When these cause problems in gardens, it is worth considering that latrines are largely seasonal and most conspicuous in Spring and, to a lesser extent, Autumn.  Filling in or attempting to move latrines may make matters worse.  Waiting a few weeks is often the best solution to this problem.

If you have special concerns about the health and safety implications of droppings near your garden, you should of course take specialist healthcare advice. Otherwise, a common sense avoidance of mammal and bird droppings in the countryside is the most sensible approach. It is worth saying that badgers’ droppings rarely smell worse than ‘musty’ and are easily avoided, being clearly produced in latrines and obvious marker sites.   

Badger Scrapes

A manicured lawn can be a time-consuming and sometimes expensive part of your garden. No wonder then, that gardeners feel it is a personal attack when their prized strip is blemished by holes or scrapes from wildlife. 

The fact is that managed lawns often have soft, well-drained soils that are regularly treated to applications of rich organic matter from mulched grass clippings when mown.  Some will have further additions of fertilisers, dressings and aeration.  Combined with Cornwall’s mild Atlantic climate, these grasslands can support a superabundance of earthworms and insect larvae concentrated into these artificial conditions.  Badgers, moles, buzzards and in fact any wild animal that can take advantage of this bonanza may pay this freely available food a visit.

Badger scrapes or snuffle holes in grassland and lawns appear as shuttlecock shaped holes where badgers have used their highly developed sense of small to locate grubs or worms, quickly unearthing them with their strong claws and muzzles.

Badger rootings in garden.
Photograph copyright John Crouch.

As a generalisation, naturally available foods are harder for badgers to find through the later months of Autumn and late Winter.  Also, in particularly hot and dry summers garden lawns may be the last place that wildlife can forage for earthworms close to the surface, with other soils baked dry and worms deeper underground. 

With so many juicy morsels close to the surface, easy to detect and dig out through fine-leaved short grass over loamy soil, it can be difficult to dissuade unwanted digging of lawns.  Badgers will normally try to keep out of the way of humans but during seasonal food shortages, lawns can be irresistible to them. 

Since these forms of damage are confined to certain limited periods of the year, many gardeners find it easier to tolerate the nuisance rather than try to exclude badgers from their garden.  If however, some form of action is necessary, there is advice that can help and some that can make matters worse. 

One remedy may be to feed the badgers until the hot dry spell finishes, or when damage is particularly bad.  Peanuts are described as being especially enjoyed by wild badgers, although there are proprietary badger feeds available from wildlife gardening suppliers. If food is put down along one of the paths used by badgers as access to the garden, it may reduce damage to the lawn.  Most conservation-based organisations suggest only feeding wild badgers in times of hardship as described above so that they do not become dependent on handouts. Homeowners should also carefully consider if in feeding badgers they may make matters worse for neighbours or endanger badgers by encouraging them to cross a busy road.

Other options include simply changing of the management of the grassland by increasing the cutting height and reducing the number of cuts.  As damage to lawns is normally worst at the beginning and end of Winter, a lawn can be left longer through Spring and Autumn but still be close-cropped during summer months when in most use for sunbathing and picnics. 

Additional advice can be requested from the Wildlife Trust on making a flowery lawn by changing the management still further so you can enjoy lying in soft, short grass full of daisies, plantains and red clover with fewer, if any, badger snuffles or molehills. Remember playing games with plantain heads and making daisy-chains in your childhood?

Some gardeners attempting a drastic solution have tried applying pesticides to their lawns to kill the earthworms and insect larvae attracting badgers and other wildlife.  However, as many of these invertebrate creatures are essential for maintaining soil structure and drainage,  the creation of soil crumbs and the recycling of organic matter,  you may solve the a digging problem for a season but actually damage your lawn in the medium term. 

In the past, a variety of chemical repellents have also been tried to deter badgers from gardens. These included rags or ropes soaked in smelly chemicals such as such as Jeyes Fluid, creosote or diesel fuel and hung across entrance points. However, experience showed that these rarely worked, and the use of these substances is also now illegal for discouraging badgers.  A chemical called Renardine used to be licensed for use as a commercial mammalian repellent, but its use for repelling badgers is no longer allowed.   Many users of smelly chemicals such as this reported they were of little use, save for the psychological benefit for a time.  Many preferred the occasional hole in their lawn to the terrible smell they had put out.  Finally on this subject, remember that 'pet' repellents do not necessarily have legal approval or clearance for use against badgers.

Other Badger Damage

If badgers raid dustbins frequently, the lid should be secured with an expanding strap with a hook at each end. These are readily available from bicycle and car accessory shops. Just put the strap through the handle on the lid and secure the two hooks to the handles on the dustbin. This usually stops all but the most persistent badger from rifling your dustbin. 

Keeping to proprietary bird seed and food mixes fed from specialist rodent-resistant feeders can remove the attractant of spilt bird food that sometimes attracts badgers to gardens.  For the same reason, do not put strong smelling or cooked food scraps on compost heaps.  Don’t just stop feeding wild birds as there are many bird feeders with trays to catch spilt seed on the market, with new designs being sold all the time

Damage to wooden or netting fences will recur if the fences are repaired. Badgers are creatures of habit and will continue to use traditional pathways. Some badger pathways will have been in seasonal use for decades if not longer.  The easiest course of action is to accept that badgers will try to use an established path. Either leave a gap in the fence or provide a badger gate.

Excluding Badgers from Gardens

Badgers are powerful animals that can break or dig under most conventional fencing and can climb surprisingly well. A fence that will keep out a badger needs to be strong, usually chain link, and 125 centimetres or more high. Thus it should be dug at least 30 centimetres (and preferably 50 centimetres) into the ground and with a piece at the bottom set at right angles facing outwards from the garden for a distance of about 50 centimetres underground. Alternatively, bending the bottom of a chain- link fence outward and downward at an angle of 45' may deter some badgers, but is unlikely to keep out a determined animal. Gateways and other points of entry need to be secure enough to stop a badger squeezing through or climbing over or under. Clearly such a fence is highly expensive to provide and maintain, and is impracticable in most situations.

Possibly the only practical way to exclude badgers from a garden is to use a temporary electric fence. These are reasonably simple and cheap to install and has the advantage of being removable, so that it only needs to be used at those times of the year when badgers are being particularly troublesome.  Most gardeners resorting to electrified wire fences find this the best method of protecting a vulnerable area such as a vegetable plot, fruit garden or allotment.  Fencing the whole perimeter of a garden can be used to prevent badgers entering the whole garden, in which case a long fence across all possible points of entry must be provided. Alternatively, an electric fence can be used to protect a vegetable or fruit garden, or an allotment.

Badger photograph copyright Ralph Hart

Some of the above text is taken from the booklet 'Problems with Badgers?' (ISBN 0 901098 04 3). Published by the RSPCA Wildlife Department, Causeway, Horsham, West Sussex RH12 1HG.

Other items that may be of interest:

• Wildlife Trust Position Statement - Badgers and Bovine TB
• New release 14th February 2006 - Cornwall Wildlife Trust says Culling is Not the Answer
• Visit the West Cornwall Badger Group website.
• Visit the Celebrating Cornwall's Mammals web site.
• A PDF version of the Badger Trust's new Badgers in Your Garden Booklet can be downloaded for printing from: http://www.Badger.org.uk/questions/Badgers-in-your-garden.pdf
• Defra Technical Advice Note (TAN) 15 gives advice on the use of electric fencing to deter Badgers and can be downloaded from: http://www.defra.gov.uk/rds/publications/technical/TAN_15.pdf

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