Badger vaccination!

[foxdropper]

Sorry mate ,didn’t mean to upset you .
Of course the population needed reducing but reduction is one thing ,going for eradication is another and please don’t quote the official line on this as I know what’s happened here and its ott .

 

[paul o']

As a kid thats how we got our polo jab vie a sugar lump at the doctors .

 

[CarlW]

Are you in an area where bTB is endemic in the badger population and where farming families have been suffering the effects on their cattle and lives for years?

There are already many in this part of the world who are thankful for the reduction in badger numbers, which, because of the special protection afforded them, have exploded out of control over the years

I doubt there’s any negative views from that quarter.

My neighbour's herd got hit hard. He started drinking and now he's a mess. Lost his wife, his kid, his farm, and his animals. Found him sleeping in his car in a layby the other night.

Sure, he made bad choices, but TB helped him along the way...

 

[Kai]

My mate farms in west wales he lost 50 cattle to TB last month , when we talked about it he said it’s not the money he’s losing because the government compensates him eventually it’s the loss of the bloodlines which take many years to get so he’s lost many many years of breeding in a month

 

[User00025]

This is all so bloody stupid. How are these idiotic oxygen wasters going to make sure they catch every badger to Jab it. They have about as much chance as juggling greased weasel sh1t. They made a bad mistake when they opened the mental hospitals and released these idiots.
If 80% of the badgers left were culled you still couldn't reverse the hedgehog decline or stop TB in cattle.

 

[Pedro]

I know. We should inject the hedgehogs to make them taste like Marmite. Then only half of them would be eaten by badgers.

Sorry - couldn't resist. Is it just me that thinks policies are only put into practice if the politicians think more people will like them than if they actually do any good?

 

[Malxwal]

Chaps, its the plan, I believe, to vaccinate cattle, not badgers ? (I could easily have skim read past the humour, forgive me).
Not that I am in any way against badger culling.

 

[Odders]

One of my permissions is a farm with a dairy/beef herd.
There's three badger setts on the farm & one of the things the owner has asked me to do is keep an eye on them to make sure they're not interfered with, or snares set.
He likes his badgers & considers them part of the farm.
I'll be over there tomorrow evening for a spot of bunny bashing & if I see him, will ask what he thinks about this.

 

[hunter243]

Is it just me that thinks policies are only put into practice if the politicians think more people will like them than if they actually do any good?

Absolutely.

 

[hunter243]

One of my permissions is a farm with a dairy/beef herd.
There's three badger setts on the farm & one of the things the owner has asked me to do is keep an eye on them to make sure they're not interfered with, or snares set.
He likes his badgers & considers them part of the farm.
I'll be over there tomorrow evening for a spot of bunny bashing & if I see him, will ask what he thinks about this.

A lot of people will be thinking 'only three'!
I don't believe there are many of us who shoot and hunt who aren't nature lovers, and we see the full picture. No matter what the Mays and Packhams of this world keep bleating, in today's world nature will never find it's own balance. Many of these protection laws and policies do nothing but exacerbate the problems facing many of the declining species.

 

[starr shot]

One of my permissions is a farm with a dairy/beef herd.
There's three badger setts on the farm & one of the things the owner has asked me to do is keep an eye on them to make sure they're not interfered with, or snares set.
He likes his badgers & considers them part of the farm.
I'll be over there tomorrow evening for a spot of bunny bashing & if I see him, will ask what he thinks about this.

Nothing wrong with badgers as long as they are clean and kept under control.Nice to see a few about the problem comes when you see 20 or 30 on one field and you have no legal method of dealing with them.

 

[finnbear270]

One of my permissions is a farm with a dairy/beef herd.
There's three badger setts on the farm & one of the things the owner has asked me to do is keep an eye on them to make sure they're not interfered with, or snares set.
He likes his badgers & considers them part of the farm.
I'll be over there tomorrow evening for a spot of bunny bashing & if I see him, will ask what he thinks about this.

It’s situations like that, being responsible for holes in the culling efforts.

 

[foxdropper]

Or is it the farmers right to do what he wants on his land and not get railroaded into a cull he dosnt want .
The cull never distinguished between clean or dirty badgers .
I fully endorse the cull to reduce badgers where they are a problem but a blanket near extinction dosnt sit well with me .
An open season would allow farmers with a problem to address it whilst places such as arable could if wished so ,leave them alone .Of course this would lead to restocks but just like foxing ,those keen enough will just step up to the mark .

 

[User00035]

A lot of people will be thinking 'only three'!
I don't believe there are many of us who shoot and hunt who aren't nature lovers, and we see the full picture. No matter what the Mays and Packhams of this world keep bleating, in today's world nature will never find it's own balance. Many of these protection laws and policies do nothing but exacerbate the problems facing many of the declining species.

I shoot on a 1200 acre farm and I can think off the top of my head of 30 badger sets, and there's probably some I've missed in scrub and woodlands. The farm is part of the local cull zone but when I took on the vermin shooting 10 years ago, some nights I'd see more badgers in the fields than rabbits. We've shot a lot of them and got them under control (for now) but the badger population will need to be controlled and managed indefinitely or, like the rabbits, they will repopulate.

A local farmer who rents pasture lost his beef herd to TB. It's not clear precisely where his cattle became infected but on our ground, most of the available grazing land is ancient permanent pasture designated SSSI and some of it is of special archaeological importance because of extensive ancient settlements and neolithic sites in the area. Therefore the grassland can never be cultivated and it needs to be grazed to be maintained, which means livestock reared for meat (whatever the vegans might say).
But the townie dog walkers think badgers are cute and as they outnumber country people in rural constituencies and have more votes, we have to formulate environmental policy on a basis of ignorance and the anthropomorphising fantasies of overgrown children. And if that means we lose our ancient chalk grasslands to nettles and scrub because no one can graze it, so be it apparently, as long as the lentil-eaters and the pink wellie brigade are happy.

 

[NoIDeer]

There are two issues here bTB in cattle and too many badgers. If vaccination works, is safe and cures the problem of bTB in cattle then crack on. If that works we are left with the problem of too many badgers. Licenced control could be an answer? The real problem, I think, is none of our wildlife conservation bodies look at the bigger picture and will condone a cull to protect other species.

 

[User00035]

Absolutely. We eradicate vermin (if we can); we control wildlife to maintain balance in a man-made landscape stripped of large predators. We control foxes and deer and no one questions the need to do so, so why should badgers be any different?

 

[User00025]

Or is it the farmers right to do what he wants on his land and not get railroaded into a cull he dosnt want .
The cull never distinguished between clean or dirty badgers .
I fully endorse the cull to reduce badgers where they are a problem but a blanket near extinction dosnt sit well with me .
An open season would allow farmers with a problem to address it whilst places such as arable could if wished so ,leave them alone .Of course this would lead to restocks but just like foxing ,those keen enough will just step up to the mark .

Sorry but you have about as much chance of blanket extinction with badgers as you do with Roland's. There should be a middle road as before the protection act there were still more than enough badgers about. Very similar to Sparrow hawks, even in the Dieldryn days there were still plenty showing up on keeper's gibbets.

 

[opticron1]

A couple of other points to think about...…. Firstly, will there be an effective bTB vaccination? Unlikely that it will be 100% effective because even the BCG that we were inflicted with as kids only has a 80-85% success rate and diminishes over the years. Secondly, will we be able to allow the vaccinated carcases of cattle into the food chain as this was one of the restrictions if we'd gone down the route of Foot and Mouth vaccination? Thirdly, how on earth would you be able to tell if a badger was vaccinated or not if our beloved government decided to try vaccinating badgers (good luck trying to subdue a badger by the way! - I can't see old brock being happy to sit still in a trap while it's inoculated).
Me.... I always remember my Dad telling me that anything black and white on the farm was shot out of hand ie. badgers and magpies - ok, that was a good few years ago and he is no longer with us, but food production was a bit more important then rather than bunny hugging!

 

[FrenchieBoy]

The way that I see it is that there is a much greater picture to look at here! As has been said shooters often see a bigger picture from the areas that they shoot. The "anti culling groups"only see Badgers being slaughtered (According to reports about 100,000 have been culled since 2013). Others see it as 30,000 cattle being slaughtered each year, which the government have to pay the farmers compensation for (I'm not sure how much that compensation is but I doubt that it covers the loss of the blood lines that the farmers have worked hard for and built up over many years of farming) What I haven't seen is any reports on the "general wildlife situation" in the intensive cull areas - i.e. How the culling of badgers has effected the numbers of species which were on the decline such as hedgehogs and ground nesting birds, have their numbers risen in the cull areas. (I accept that after just 3 years of culling those figures might not be very significant)
I am not against badger culling but I would be against total eradication of any species (Just as I think any right minded person would be). I personally think it was a mistake for Badgers to have been given protected status and if this hadn't have happened I do not believe that we would be seeing such a great amount of cattle suffering from or being slaughtered because of Bovine TB.

Vaccination may be a solution, but when they talk about vaccination are the government talking about vaccinating the Badgers or the Cattle or both, and at what cost compared with the effectiveness and costs of the badger Culls (Including the costs of policing the cull areas).

For me there are an awful lot of questions that need to be addressed!

What would the cost be of vaccinating all badgers and/or cattle and would vaccination be an effective method of eradicating/minimising BTV compared to the costs and effectiveness of Badger Culling, Policing the cull areas and the compensation paid to the farmers who are currently loosing cattle to BTV?

If the government are proposing to vaccinate Badgers how would they go about this to ensure that they managed to vaccinate ALL badgers?

If they are going to vaccinate just cattle and not vaccinate Badgers would they have any plans to "control" the numbers of badgers throughout the country to save a "population explosion" and nature having to take over to find a way to control their numbers?

Are there any current facts or figures available showing the negative effect that the current numbers of Badgers are having on wildlife such as the rapidly disappearing hedgehog (which Badger loves to feed on) and the numbers of ground nesting birds compared to the numbers before Badgers were afforded "Protected Status"?

What would the government propose to do about Deer who we know are capable of carrying BTV?

This subject could be "debated" and talked about till the cows come home (No pun intended) but I think the general public should be given much more information regarding Bovine TB and it's control/eradication!

OK, I've got my tin hat on ready for any replies!

 

[Dunwaters]

We've been culling badgers for about 10 years in selected areas but the spotlight is very much focused on deer as a vector too. In some areas deer are testing out at nearly 30% positive and a good proportion of them are asymptomatic.
No one is making any definitive statements re the infection chain just yet but it's being worked on.
One of the big surprises was the impact deer have on grass growth, up to 40% goes to making venison instead of mutton or beef in core areas.
Seems like the farmers have a legitimate gripe after all.