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Our Life at Denbury Farm Blog 28th August 2017

 

I reckon the photo of the badgers is them telling that they are watching and waiting. The video is to show the our drones view of the farm and glimpse of what and who we can see. We also have thermal for night time. The Roe Deer scull was found on a walkabout checking for traps. 

To all you very sincere sabs and other well wishers, thank you for all your support and kind offers. Over the years of meeting many of you sabs through camp badger  I know that most of you do the sabbing at great cost to yourselves and put yourselves at risk of being assaulted and abused by those you are sabbing against, some of the police and the courts.

Some of the many messages and feedback  are very concerning about the way money that Jay Tiernan is collecting is being handed out to the Badger Camps. In 2015 when a camp was at Denbury Farm, request for funds were being refused for one reason or another, that I could not understand. I understood that Stop the Cull was started to collect money for all Badger Camps and activities.  Make no mistake it is the Badger Camps and others money, it is not Jay Tiernans money. I find very irregular that just one person, Jay Tiernan, more so that he is a convicted fraudster has got control of money that is meant to help you all. The accounts for Stop the Cull should be available to all. The only solution for complete transparency is that a funding committee should be actioned to collect all monies. I will be updating further information that I have as soon as it is confirmed.

The camp badger field is available if any of you can arrange a camp this year or if any of you can do any night sabbing it would help. We have people watching and patrolling. Two people who have been demonised by Jay Tiernan and others I must say are Bobbies and Fox, they have never let me down in the help with both the badger cull and game shooting that  is more repulsive than all. Their way of sabbing may not be to all peoples likings. But for sure it works and that is what matters. They are very sincere and a pleasure to have as friends.

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Our Life at Denbury Farm Blog 22nd August 2017

 

JUST A FEW DAYS LEFT BEFORE THE KILLING FIELDS

This year’s 2017 killing by Badger Cull will get into full swing after this bank holiday, going on for 6 weeks. (Map of killing areas http://innocentbadger.com/cull-zones/) there is a list of what to look and for below.
The badger cage traps will start being put out from now, as will peanuts to start encouraging the badgers to the enter the traps than initially will be left open. The trappers will go back to the traps very early in the morning. 3 to 4 am is not unusual, the captured badgers are then blown to pieces with a 12 bore shotgun. The so called marksman will be out most of the night with their high powered rifles, scouring the countryside in areas that have previously been identified. Badgers are a creature of habit, they use the same pathways for many decades, leaving easy signs for the killers to see. Trouble is that the so called marksman are not all marksman at all and will wound the badgers who will die a lingering agonising death. The evil barbaric government promised humane and professional killing. In 4 years it has not been that.
The badger cull saboteurs work hard to stops the killings. Many will spend all day hunting the countryside for the traps to let the pixies know their whereabouts. Others will drive around countryside all night looking for the marksman who will not want to be seen doing their evil job and take flight as soon as they are spotted by the saboteurs, so as not to be identified and shown as being the filth they are. The saboteurs have been demonised by Member of Parliament Ian Liddell-Grainger who wrote “I thought most of them were in the habit of lying in bed until the pubs open, or until the postman arrives with the benefit cheque (or do such things get paid straight into their accounts these days?) “Either way, since they are all malingerers and scroungers there is no real incentive to leap out of bed as soon as the dawn chorus strikes up,”   They are not. Many are professional people, house wife’s and different occupations who have been taking their annual holidays and weekends walking fields and woodlands in the pouring rain, helping to protect the badgers and all wildlife. All are very sincere in protecting our wildlife. They spend their hard earned money funding fuel and other essentials whilst helping the Badgers, How do I know, because I know some of them. Denbury Farm is known a Camp Badger Somerset. For three years we allowed the saboteurs through Jay Tiernan of Stop the Cull to use our fields as the campsite. The only condition being that Jay would always make a camp here if ever the cull came to our part of the country. Unfortunately now that we need him he has refused to help us, as he has with a camp in Devon. Really strange to make that decision and not very honourable.  So I would strongly suggest that any person contributing to help the saboteurs only give any money to a local saboteurs groups in the cull areas or in your area if you are helping them to stop fox hunting. You can find them on facebook. You can then always be sure the money goes to helping the saboteurs and not were it is unaccountable.
We have now managed to get other saboteurs here a Denbury without Jay Tiernans help. Could do with more but today people are walking a large area around the farm and will do so of a night time. They are from a local saboteurs group with others. We also have a drone with thermal imaging protecting the boundaries and I will be about day and night.

What to look for and pass on registration numbers and name if known to your local hunt saboteurs on Facebook
Cage traps with peanuts scattered in the area
Peanuts scattered or in piles in fields and woodland
Holes with peanuts in the bottom in fields and woodland
Have you got Maize growing in your area. Good spots for laying traps
Any vehicles carrying cage traps
Unusual 4 wheel drive vehicles driving around country lanes
Unusual activity in the countryside and torch lights at night
Shooters bragging about what they have shot
People you suspect as being involved with the shooting

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Our Life at Denbury Farm Blog 20th August 2017

 

              OUR BADGERS ARE IN DANGER OF BEING SHOT

       SEE THEM LIVE EVERY NIGHT AT  www.denburyfarm.co.uk    Approx 9.pm 

 This year for the first time the Badger Cull is coming to the part of Somerset we live at.
After nearly 20 years of us broadcasting live badgers on a sett at Denbury Farm they are now at a serious risk of being killed by being shot by an evil Government and the lobbying of the evil National Farmers Union, who both know there is no scientific proof that it is Badgers that pass on TB to Cattle. In fact there is evidence that shows that cattle pass on Bovine Tuberculosis to badgers, deer, goats, pigs, camelids (llamas and alpacasOtters dogs cats, and many other mammals. Yes even your precious moggies, https://www.news-medical.net/health/Tuberculosis-in-Animals.aspx but the stupid government and more so the National Farmers Union somehow don’t want the public to know the truth. They don’t want you to know because they are wasting taxpayers money. Up to 2015 the cost was £17 Million that works out at £7580 for every badger unnecessarily butchered. That cost does not include 2016 and future years of the slaughter. Money that could well be spent by the NHS on the sick. Guess what, of those badgers killed in 2013 so few badgers were found to have Bovine Tuberculosis  that the government no longer test any badgers they murder, so there are no figures of how many badgers carry TB.

Bovine TB is Bovine TB, not badger,  deer or any other animal TB. Recently it has been found in two areas that have never had TB or badgers. A few days ago cattle on a farm on the Island of Skye have been tested positive for TB. Badgers didn’t cause it, there are none on the Island. One cause of the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis is through the movement of cattle around the country. Every week thousands of cattle who have been sold in markets and privately are moved from one end of the country to the other. Cattle are supposed to be tested before being moved, but there are a few who don’t. Other causes are free roaming deer, alpacas and llamas living in fields next to cattle. The Badgers are scapegoats because of lobbying by the National Farmers Union and government scientists who have a one track mind and ignore some of the worlds most eminent scientists. 

The photographs were taken last night by Mrs Farmer

 

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Our Life at Denbury Farm Blog 17th August 2017

Our nature being it mammals, insects or plants in one way or the other is gradually but surely being killed off by us humans through greed, misinformation and wrong doing.

The plant ragwort is one, it having a bad reputation as being a killer of horses and cattle is putting the Cinnabar Moth at risk. The Ragwort pretty little daisy lookalikes flowers are an attraction to butterflies, moths and other insects that our world would be a lesser place without them.

Ragwort can be found anywhere. And we get our fair share at Denbury. about 10 years ago in a small paddock of a little over an acre that had lain fallow without us ever seeing any sign of ragwort, suddenly looked as if we were growing it as a crop. There was so much that we needed to mow the paddock and round bale it. We made three large round bales.  Eating a lot of ragwort would cause horses and cattle to be ill. They would need to eat a very large amount to cause any great damage and being that it has a very bitter taste, most horses and cattle avoid eating it. I have seen horses in bare fields with a lot of untouched ragwort. Mixed in with hay it would be eaten, but most farmers and farm contractors when making hay would go around growing ragwort so that it would not get into the hay.  Again they would need to eat a large amount of the hay to cause them a problem.

The pretty ragwort flower attracts a lot of butterflies, moths and insects. The Cinnabar Moth lays its eggs on ragwort plants, their caterpillars eating the poisonous leaves and flowers. The poison and fowl taste stays in their yellow and black banded body’s and stays when they turn into moths, it stops any bird or predators from eating them. 

Trouble is that with peoples misguided perception of ragwort the plant is steadily being killed off. If it carries on the beautiful Cinnabar Moth will disappear. The Cinnabar Moth has died off at this time of the year, coming again in the spring, so Mrs Farmer has done a quick sketch of one. 

 

 

 

 

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Our Life at Denbury Farm Blog 12th August 2017

I had not intended to write about our fox so soon, until I realised that in some areas the fox hunting cubing season has started. Cubing happens early mornings usually in the middle of August before the fox hunting season starts late August to the beginning of September.

Cubing is the training of young  hounds for fox hunting. What is hunted is in the name,  fox cubs that are no more than six months old, just like those that you can see on our webcams and our photographs. They have no experience in life let alone being chased by a pack of killer hounds, who are learning the smells of the fox, the chasing and the killing, it is said that it is educating new hound to the pack. If they are not up to being fox hounds they to have a gruesome end. They are shot. When the young hounds catch a cub it is cruel and not a pleasant sight. They are ripped to shreds, their screams are pitiful that can never be forgotten. Fox hunting is evil, but if you thought it could never be worse, think again, cubing is far worse, so savage that it is rarely spoken about outside the hunting fraternity and not widely known about. It is illegal as is fox hunting, and has been so since 2005., Although you wouldn’t think so by the way it is completely ignored by those hunting.
The hunts tell that they are clearing fox vermin, that kill sheep and chickens. There is no argument about that fox, if they get the opportunity will kill chickens. Over the years we have lost quite a few to the fox but it has always been our fault for not putting up more protection. We keep a radio to deter the fox from  going in the area that our chickens, turkey and other fowl scratch about.  Last year we lost a chicken to a fox. The batteries on the radio had gone flat.

As for taking lambs we have never lost a lamb to a fox. My experience has been completely different and witnessed by those watching our webcams. Many a time we have witnessed lambs in the process of being born, with a fox walking in the middle of our small flock just feet away. Never did we witness the flock panicking and taking flight or have ever seen in the 25 years we have  here a fox attack our sheep

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Our Life at Denbury Farm Blog 9th August 2017

A few more photographs of the Fox family at Denbury Farm, although you can see them every night on the webcams feeding with the Badgers and sometimes the Deer.
Going by a black and white photograph in the left hand corner of our Facebook page dated the 8th November 2004, we have been broadcasting the webcams for eighteen years. A few of our regulars have been on the journey with us for all of that time.
When I first started to do the webcams, I was not long coming to Somerset from London. It had always wanted to live in the countryside and after spending many years holidaying with a friend it soon became wanting to be a Farmer. LOL, more like wanting to own a farm. 
Although I had always like seeing animals they became what I believed to be a nuisance. The Fox taking our chickens, the Badgers digging up the fields to find worms and the Deer eating our grass that was needed for our cows. Yes , we did when we first came to Denbury had a small herd of pedigree Charolaise cattle. I must have been stark raving bonkers. They shit for England, and I had never worked so hard. But that’s another story, that I will tell
As soon as I started the webcams I realised how important our British wildlife is. It is not wildlife, it is life that is wild and  most if not of all is very precious. Seeing how the Fox are with their cubs you can see that it is some form of love. What form of love it is It would be hard to guess. Maybe similar to humans, why not, so I find it now very difficult, if not impossible to accept in these days any hunting with dogs or game shooting. Fox hunting is repulsive and I really cant get my head around any person would want to see an animal suffer the way Fox do when they are torn apart by a pack of dogs. There is no justification or reason to ever allow hunting to be legalised.
The older viewers of the webcams may have seen the Fox on our webcams walking in between our sheep with newly born lambs. The sheep never moved and the Fox was just sometimes inches from the newly born, even once or twice with the lambs being born. Its rubbish that Fox target new born lambs.

 

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Our Life at Denbury Farm Blog 5th August 2017

Mrs Farmer on a walk with our dogs was in the valley this afternoon and came across a small herd Roe Deer in the valley field. Two Bucks,  four Doe and a couple of Fawn. Over the past few weeks the herd have been growing and we have seen them on the webcams from a Doe and a Buck to what Mrs Farmer came across today. Not a large herd but large enough for them to be rutting and there may well have been others in the woods that surround Denbury Farm, for we have seen them with our thermal camera of a night time. Mrs Farmer would be the first to admit it was a shock, for although we had seen a Red Deer Rut some years ago, this was the first Roe Deer and for it being able to be witnessed. Fortunately she had her camera with her and although the dogs were with her they stayed very quiet, quiet enough not to disturb the Deer and allow for some photographs to be taken. 
We farm Denbury Farm to be wildlife friendly, most farmers would say it is over run, (scruffy) but it does encourage  and being we are mainly surrounded by Ancient Woodland, our way of farming encourages great wildlife opportunities.
Mrs Farmer was allowed to watch the rut, courtship and mating  for a good three quarters of an hour. With the Buzzards calling above her whilst hunting, she had a great wildlife experience She returned home as the dogs were getting bored rather than the Deer leaving the valley.
Roe Deer mate July August time, but although the gestation period is nine months the eggs don’t implant and start growing until January time, with the Fawns being born five months later in the Spring so the Doe has the rich spring grass to produce good milk for the fawns.

 

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Our Life on Denbury Farm Blog 2nd August 2017

 

Watching the memorials to those who lost their lives at the Battle of Passchendaele made me remember a Great Uncle who died in the 1st world war, a Charles Smith. 

Some years ago a tattered old case was passed down to me. When I first glanced the contents of the case I found it contained many items, letters, photographs, old insurance documents, invoices, birth and death certificates and other interesting items collected by another Great Uncle Walter. The most important being a letter from the Red Cross dated the 23rd of February 1918 to my Great Grandmother on the death of her son Charles Smith in a battle in Northern France.  Many mothers would have received a letter of this type on the death of there sons. What a terribly sad day it would have been for them. With the letter about Charlie there was a letter about the action. The Passchendaele memorial made me realise that no one in our family had ever visited Charlie’s Grave and he had died a 100 year ago this year.  I started a search on the internet and will continue but as of yet I have not found any grave that I could visit and can only think that he is buried in an unknown grave.

The letter from the Enquiry Department of The British Red Cross reads. 

Dear Madam,  We much regret to say that not withstanding constant and careful enquiries we have not been able to hear anything of your Son except a sad report from a Sgt. Wright, now a prisoner  in Germany that he saw him instantly killed on April the 14th 1917 and have had to come to the conclusion that he must have lost his life at the time when he went missing. We have questioned all the men of his unit whom we have been able to see, both in English Hospitals and bases abroad and none have been able to throw any light on his casualty. We have however been able to collect some details of the action,  and we  enclose a copy of there fearing that in spite of all our efforts we shall not be able to help any further in this matter, we do indeed watch all the prison lists that come in from Germany but we cannot hope to find there any names of missing so long ago. We offer our sincere sympathy to the family and friends. Signed on behalf of the Earl of Lucan.

Action report. 1st Essex April 13th 14th 1917

Our report shows that in the middle of April 1917 the 1st Essex where in action near Arras, one sold in B company says we were attacking the village of Monchy-le-Preux S.E of Arras in the early morning of April the 14th. Some of us were told to hold the front German line , while the rest of the Battalion advance, there was not much fighting and the Germans cut off the rest of the Battalion. We had to retire owing to our being outnumbered and held the line 200 yards in the rear.

We are told that the time of the start  was 5. am and that the attack was made on the hill that was reached. Other accounts carry on the story.  The fighting got severe and we reach our objective under heavy fire. The Battalion retired about noon and it was quite impossible for the wounded to be brought in. The ground was lost in the German counter attack. Casualties seem to have occurred in our front line trench even before the Battalion went over the top, and in the course of the engagement our losses were heavy.