The Badger Cull

I would have thought modern night vision equipment negates the use of high powered lamps given that badgers are so sensitive.

Our posts crossed.

Yes, granjura Defra

From the Defra site on badger cull methods:

Lamping
19. The course must explain the technique, regulations and conditions concerning the use
of artificial lighting. This includes:
a. The need for landowner’s permission when shooting (preferably in writing);
b. Practical application of lamping;
c. The need for additional people when using artificial light;
d. Clarity on who must be licensed according to the tasks carried out;
e. Prohibited, authorised (licensed) and allowed (no specific licence needed) methods
of taking/killing badgers;

Use of Night Vision Equipment
20. The course must explain the technique, regulations and conditions concerning the use
of night vision (NV) equipment. This includes:

• Use at a range of no more than 60m over a fixed bait station, which is known to be
a safe, secure shooting location;
• Use from a fixed, preferably elevated, shooting position;
• Only Generation 2 or 3 Night Vision equipment with IR illumination must be used as
a rifle scope (or comparable digital NV equipment with IR); and
• A separate NV spotting device (also with IR illumination) and/or lamp must be used
by a second person to scan the wider area for unexpected non-targets, e.g.
livestock and members of the public.
It follows that night shooting using Night Vision equipment, as with use of a spotlight and
rifle, will also require a minimum team of two people.

Movement of cattle law will be changed from January, because even Defra and the Government agree they are not tight enough. Most farmers act within the law, but some do not.

Granjura, I agree with some of what you say but not sure about one or two points:

Cattle would not have been moved after foot and mouth without a movement licence and this still applies at any time. The rules would have been very stringent after such a devastating blow to the farming industry.

Cattle can not be moved 'on the quiet' just before TB testing is due. They're not even allowed to go to slaughter without a movement order. Cattle are tagged and have records. You can't sell a whole herd without somebody noticing and no farmer would want to support an illegal herd. What's he going to do with it?

I don't dispute your knowledge of badgers but if they are as timid as you say, huge lamps would be a hinderence. This is not a lamping excercise like fox and rabbit culls.

good

From this evening's news it looks a if the cull will be called off for the time being as it isn't economically viable. A massive miscalculation about badger numbers means that the cost to farmers of killing the requisite percentage is too great.

Many of the badger setts I know are so close to habitations btw- because housing estates were built very near recently. So people and children will be asleep, or watching TV, and men in balaclavas with huge lamps will be less than 100 yards, shooting with powerful rifles

There are no badgers in the area of Scotland where I live and one sees fields full of thriving young beef cattle hereabouts, so I feel a bit remote from all this. The transfer of the disease does not appear to be clear-cut from what I've read so I'm glad to hear of a pause in the cull proceedings.

Sorry about Smiley- inappropriate and an error - it is not funny at all, sadly

I wonder how they are going to shoot the badgers at the sett?? Anybody with any experience at all of badgers will know that if you want to badger watch you have to be absolutely quiet, sit downwind in dark non-rustly clothes. When badgers first come out of the sett, they spend some time with just their snout and ears out, listening, smelling, watching (for shapes moving, they actually have very bad eyesight) - if there is any doubt at all, they will retreat and NOT come out. If by any chance they manage to shoot one- I can assure you none of the others will come out- and in successive days, they will be extra extra cautious - knowing that one of them is missing and having heard the commotion and smelt the blood- heard the dogs, etc. It's going to be a very long drawn process . To think that the badgers will just come out to be shot- shows how little they know about their behaviour .

I wonder how many people will go and sit on the setts to prevent this - if it was one of 'my' badger sett- I would.

Any body fancy changing the food chain so that there is very little milk for humans, or beef in it? Or do we need them to provide the energy for us to moan about non-fatal cruelty elsewhere.

The meat isn't wasted if dogs eat it. The bones aren't wasted if they are used to make glue. I like rose veal too. Used to get it occasionally from Helen Browning's farms when she did postal deliveries.

Merlotgran- exaclty what happens here. People need to be better educated about veal, and regulations adhered to, and then veal meat will become popular again. The cruelty of the crate system put so many people off.

Killing all males at birth in dairy herds is not acceptable imho, and neither is sending them on awful long journeys to Italy (:

Merlotgran, I am afraid that there is still a lot of cattle movements of herds, some legal, some not, I am afraid. Cattle from the SW were TB if a big problem, were allowed to move to the NE to replace herds lost to foot and mouth. Other herds are sold and moved on at a low price quickly ... just before TB testing is due!

Rose veal is very pleasant to eat, more flavour than white veal but subtler than beef steaks. If more of us were to eat it, even occasionally, it would cut down the waste of slaughtering male dairy calves at birth.

It's a few years since I was involved with dairy farming, Bags. My DH was the arable manager and was not directly involved in the dairy unit but as a way of earning some dosh while my children were small, I reared the dairy calves (mostly Fresians). Only female calves can be added to the herd so male calves have to be disposed of in some way. The farm I worked on used to send them to the knacker's yard unless they were from a good breeding line and might show promise as a breeding bull. The meat from the calves used to go for dog food and the bones to the glue factory.
There is now a move to promote rose veal where calves are not slaughtered until approx 9 months old which I think is a far better option than the waste of a male calf at birth. I am not a vegetarian but am concerned about animal welfare and veal has had such a bad press in the past it's going to take a while to convince the British public that this is a better option.

Beef farming is a completely different industry.

Difficult one for me as I live surrounded by beef farmers and have seen and heard their serious concerns about bovine TB. My instinct is that it is a shame to cull wild creatures on principle - but many people's livelihoods depend on a healthy herd and I am also concerned for them. Mind you, beef (and any meat) is an expensive way of obtaining protein - to individual's pockets and to the environment.

That's what I would have thought, merlot – about farmers not producing more meat than the market demands, which is why I asked the question. Some previous posts seemed to be suggesting that the calves were killed just for the hell of it. I thought that unlikely. So what is done with the calves after the knacker's yard? Is the meat and leather used? It would be silly not to.

I do wish people on here would do just a teensy weensy bit of research before criticising farmers. Daman is right, male calves are a a by product of the DAIRY industry. No farmer is going to produce more beef than the market demands. Animals cost money to rear. They also do not move them around the country willy nilly.

Calves are a by product of our need for milk. Simples - dont drink milk. Do away with most dairy farms. Allow badgers to romp and gambol.

Interesting about the surplus to requirements calves. Are farmers producing more meat than the market demands then, and if so why?

Read in the paper this morning that the badger cull may be called off because winter is approaching and there also appears to be more badgers than first thought. The farmers have to pay for each badger killed and are backtracking with the thought of actually paying for this service!!

The government is of course not carrying out another u-turn.

Feeling even more sick now! I contacted my MP on the subject and received a lot of waffle from his assistant which boils down to the fact that he's going with the flow and will see what happens as a result of the 'pilot schemes' or whatever euphemism is being used. I can't bear to read the email again I feel so choked.

I t isn't anything to do with my idea of the countryside - it is just that I believe that badgers have ever right to inhabit this world just as we have. Killing other species because they don't fit in with our lifestyle seems grossly immoral.