Badger, Badger, Badger

Badgers spread TB. It's pretty simple, where there are Cattle and Badgers.. Cattle get TB.

You have Dirty badgers, You have clean badgers.

You leave the badgers alone, they keep on multiplying and the problem gets worse?

Surely the thing to do is cull the badgers, and Vaccinate the clean ones. It's a massive problem, one that's only going to get worse the longer it's left. It's a massive massive pain in the backside, there's enough work to do on farms as it is. I work on our 100+ Head herd here at home, and on a neighbours farm who keeps beef cattle, he has 130 BEEF Cattle.

Each year, we have to catch each individual animal, take a note of its ear tag, shave part of its neck. Inject it in two different neck sites, and release it. Try doing that 100+ times, with Dairy cattle it upsets them greatly, animals get bashed about due to being scared. With the Beef cattle it's even worse.

Beef cattle are massive as you can well imagine. Each time you try to get one in for testing you're risking getting killed quite easily.

After you've done all the injecting. The vet comes back four days later to inspect them again! This time you trap them in the crush/race and the injection site is measured for a reaction to the Tuberculin. It's all an absolute massive ball ache. The last time we tested the neighbours beef cattle one broke its horn off and another damaged a joint in its leg leaving it infected, it's still very poorly. Why should we have to suffer all this because of Badgers?
 
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Who's performing the cull?

Assuming they have got the ISG's report, yet are still planning a cull, surely mean's there is either more to it than just TB, or there is other contradicting evidence they found more conclusive?

If the only report on the matter says it won't do any good, I can't see why they would still be doing it? Unless someone just really doesn't like badgers :p
 
TaKeN said:
Badgers spread TB. It's pretty simple, where there are Cattle and Badgers.. Cattle get TB.

You have Dirty badgers, You have clean badgers.

You leave the badgers alone, they keep on multiplying and the problem gets worse?

Surely the thing to do is cull the badgers, and Vaccinate the clean ones. It's a massive problem, one that's only going to get worse the longer it's left. It's a massive massive pain in the backside, there's enough work to do on farms as it is. I work on our 100+ Head herd here at home, and on a neighbours farm who keeps beef cattle, he has 130 BEEF Cattle.

Each year, we have to catch each individual animal, take a note of its ear tag, shave part of its neck. Inject it in two different neck sites, and release it. Try doing that 100+ times, with Dairy cattle it upsets them greatly, animals get bashed about due to being scared. With the Beef cattle it's even worse.

Beef cattle are massive as you can well imagine. Each time you try to get one in for testing you're risking getting killed quite easily.

After you've done all the injecting. The vet comes back four days later to inspect them again! This time you trap them in the crush/race and the injection site is measured for a reaction to the Tuberculin. It's all an absolute massive ball ache. The last time we tested the neighbours beef cattle one broke its horn off and another damaged a joint in its leg leaving it infected, it's still very poorly. Why should we have to suffer all this because of Badgers?
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I do agree, as I said in my original post a badger cull is necessary done in a controlled manner,it is a problem for us all and i understand the hardship faced by dairy farmers.
Just needs looking at on a bigger scale than just badger culling.
 
Surely a badger cull is only necessary if it will actually help?

As far as I am aware, the only decent published evidence suggests it'll actually not achieve very much on its own.
 
TaKeN said:
Badgers spread TB. It's pretty simple, where there are Cattle and Badgers.. Cattle get TB.

You have Dirty badgers, You have clean badgers.

You leave the badgers alone, they keep on multiplying and the problem gets worse?

Surely the thing to do is cull the badgers, and Vaccinate the clean ones. It's a massive problem, one that's only going to get worse the longer it's left. It's a massive massive pain in the backside, there's enough work to do on farms as it is. I work on our 100+ Head herd here at home, and on a neighbours farm who keeps beef cattle, he has 130 BEEF Cattle.

Each year, we have to catch each individual animal, take a note of its ear tag, shave part of its neck. Inject it in two different neck sites, and release it. Try doing that 100+ times, with Dairy cattle it upsets them greatly, animals get bashed about due to being scared. With the Beef cattle it's even worse.

Beef cattle are massive as you can well imagine. Each time you try to get one in for testing you're risking getting killed quite easily.

After you've done all the injecting. The vet comes back four days later to inspect them again! This time you trap them in the crush/race and the injection site is measured for a reaction to the Tuberculin. It's all an absolute massive ball ache. The last time we tested the neighbours beef cattle one broke its horn off and another damaged a joint in its leg leaving it infected, it's still very poorly. Why should we have to suffer all this because of Badgers?
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I think you'll find that the cattle are there because of farmers. Why not blame the farmers?

I appreciate your perspective on this but I don't agree with it. ;)
 
Kenai said:
Surely a badger cull is only necessary if it will actually help?

As far as I am aware, the only decent published evidence suggests it'll actually not achieve very much on its own.
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But the fact its still planned to go ahead means either there is more evidence we aren't aware of, or the department planning it is run by utter morons?
 
Skeeter said:
But the fact its still planned to go ahead means either there is more evidence we aren't aware of, or the department planning it is run by utter morons?
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Well as much as i'd rather it was the former, i'd be wholly unsurprised to find it was the latter.
 
Kenai said:
Surely a badger cull is only necessary if it will actually help?

As far as I am aware, the only decent published evidence suggests it'll actually not achieve very much on its own.
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This is my point, the government needs to support British farmers in a more constructive way. Farming, dairy farming in particular is in rapid decline in this country and as such is a massive, massive loss to the economy.
 
Skeeter said:
Yes, because only farmers consume dairy or beef products... :rolleyes:
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The cattle are there because the farmers want them to be, for their own financial benefit (cattle = commodity). I was just saying I am on the side of wildlife as it was here way before our farms in most cases. The badgers aren't the cause of the cattle being there, so they are effectively innocent bystanders. Farmers are the cause of the spread of Bovine TB in their herds because if they grew plant crops instead this wouldn't happen.
 
Do you live in the town?

It amuses me that in your Opinion, Farmers with Cattle should somehow just grow Plant Crops, and that Farmers only farm cattle for money.

Mum does it because she enjoy looking after animals. Do you drink Milk? do you eat Beef?
 
TaKeN said:
Do you live in the town?

It amuses me that in your Opinion, Farmers with Cattle should somehow just grow Plant Crops, and that Farmers only farm cattle for money.

Mum does it because she enjoy looking after animals. Do you drink Milk? do you eat Beef?
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Not exactly my point. I was saying that badgers are being made into scapegoats for the Bovine TB problem in commercial cattle herds, and the price they have to pay is death. Farmers are complaining that they're out of pocket when Bovine TB strikes/spreads, so badgers die? I'm trying to understand why farmers wealth is more important than our wildlife?
 
Isn't TB just a natural control mechanism to keep animal populations under control?

Yet again in our arrogance we think we can control nature and over-ride the natural order. We can't, but badgers are going to find out the hard way that we aren't fast learners.

In fact we just don't learn at all.

I was watching a program the other day about pig-barn fires. Some farmers had upwards of 10,000 pigs in a single super-barn. They kept the pig-manure under the barn for efficiency. The barns kept burning down. And the farmers kept building the same design barns, on bigger and bigger scales.

Some pig farmers had 3 super-barns burn down. Some of them finally took the hint (or ran out of money), but those ill-designed barns are still in use today, because they are more cost-effective than keeping the manure outside.

Methinks farmers aren't always the brightest sparks.

And scientific opinion is still divided about whether the badgers are to blame or not. But don't let that stop you from trying to play God, Mr Farmer.
 
spengos said:
Killing hundreds, if not thousands of badgers isn't going to solve the problem. Plus it's not just badgers that carry the virus.

It truly disgusts me to see people encouraging the slaughter of innocent wild animals. Some people won't be happy until every living thing on the planet is extinct, and all because of human greed and ignorance.
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Yes because culling the numbers of one species and the extinction of every living thing on the planet are clearly comparable. :rolleyes:

In other news I pulled a weed today, tomorrow I was thinking if burning down the amazon.
 
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