Poisoned Badgers
Dog walker came upon these two dead adult badgers and called our badger group to come out to investigate. On arrival one badger a sow was found 3mtr’s from the sett entrance, in the tunnel entrance of their sett was a dead boar.
RSPCA were called out and the Police Wildlife Crimes Officer informed and Natural England.
The sow’s fur was stained blue and the boar had bled from the mouth. Arrangements were made for the RSPCA to take these badgers to Peterborough where an autopsy would be carried out. The results from the autopsy found that the stomach contents of both these badgers contained large amounts of slug pellets!! Investigations found in the fields of the nearby farm, a spillage of slug pellets that probably occurred during the filling up of the hopper of the applicator. And these two badgers unfortunately came upon these slug pellets and eat them which resulted in their deaths.
You may find the information from these website of interest.
http://www.green-innovations.co.uk/pellet-dangers.php
http://www.cat.org.uk/ihateslugs/slugpellets.tmpl
