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I must admit my biggest hates are rats and mice. My mother was the cause of it, she was frightened of them and passed it onto me. I don’t even like to see them and will do all I can to make sure I don’t. Frightened of them would be an understatement. I remembered once some years ago sitting on a tree stump in our wood watching deer. I felt something on my shoe, on looking down there looked like a herd of them jumping around my feet, I didn’t hang about, I left in a real hurry. I wouldn’t even allow my children to have pet mice or hamster’s, so when Mrs Farmer showed me the photographs she had taken of the mice I brushed them aside, not wanting to know until she showed them to a friend who convinced me I should take a peek. I suppose the mice in photograph is a bit more acceptable than rats.
The Badger Cull has not started in our area yet. Don’t know what is happening because the first culls in both West Somerset and Gloucestershire have been extended for another 5 years so the Government has gone against its word as the idea was to see what difference the cull has made. Believe me, it hasn’t. People I know who live in the area and have been sabbing the cull for the past four years have seen very few badgers in the cull area and Bovine TB in cattle herds have no reduced at all. I believe there has been an increase. With the 10000 badgers murdered just a very small percentage has been tested for TB. What have only a minimal amount have been found to have the disease.  Extending the cull shows clearly that the government are trying to kill every badger. Evil bastards. And remember it is the NFU who have been most vocal in calling for the cull. There is a lot of you who can punish the NFU by not ever insuring with them.
Even though the cull has not started in our area we have people out day and night checking for traps and shooters. They have thermal imaging monocular so they are well able to check for the killers. There are also others who are watching for strangers with instruction to take photographs of any suspicious people who if they are out to shoot or trap will be named and shamed.

I wasn’t clever enough to reduce the size of our drone footage to be able to download it to our last blog. I got a friend to do it for me. So it is on tonight.

I put the drone footage on so that the Badger Killers can see that we are prepared for them. We are able to see all around the farm. If you check the model you will see just how good it is.DJi Phantom  Pro Plus. It is capable of flying for 30 minutes and travel for at least 5 miles. It has many other goodies on it, like follow me where it can be set to follow, so if we see a killer we can set the drone to follow where ever they go. Can even upload a live view on Facebook, so it is an awesome bit of equipment for sabbing, especially for fox hunting. We also have a thermal imaging attachment for nightime. Same as what you see in helicopter police chases at night. Because it is an attachment I am unable to record it. But its good. 

That enough of the cull for a moment. The drone shows just what a view the Buzzards can see whilst they are soaring. In fact any bird of prey whilst they are hunting. We never found the buzzard nest on the farm, but every day we see the Buzzard Fledgling and its parents hunting our fields for food and teaching the youngster. 

The Buzzards have a lot to contend with a very large flock of Crows we have on the farm, a murder of crows is their proper name. The way they gang up and swoop on the buzzards I can understand why they are so called. At the crows nesting time it is far worse. We wonder why the buzzards nest here, but they have done so for the twenty seven year we have been here. One year we had fourteen pairs all together flying above us. It was a sight. It was at that time that we found a young buzzard nearly drowning in the lake. It was in a bad way so we took it to West Hatch RSPCA centre that is quite close to us. They told us that they would phone when it was well, so it could be released back to our area. They never did. We always regret not trying to help it ourselves.

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.

              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

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

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.

After a night of heavy rain we woke to find a flock of fifteen Canadian Geese on the hill in the horse field. It could have been that they rested overnight in the field because of the heavy rain. When I first noticed them they were grazing but they didn’t stay long after we had seen them and flew off to the southwest. 

Just a quick update. We have taken Kez twice to be mated. Although Benson her boyfriend has been very keen, no mating had taken place, it was a bit too early. We sent blood away last Wednesday for progesterone test to see what part of her cycle she is in. The readings were low but we still took her to see Benson as Tass was riding her and we didn’t want to take a chance that we would miss any chance of a mating and getting Kez pregnant. Another blood test was taken yesterday (Friday) and the results were phoned to us today at 1.30.pm.It was good news, Kez is ready for mating today and tomorrow. Mad dash to finish cleaning the holiday cottages for our new guests that arrive a 4.pm so that we could get over to Benson as soon as possible. To Mrs Farmers surprise the roads were clear and being that the journey of about 10 miles is mostly on holiday routes it was a fast journey.
Initially Kez and Benson were pleased to see each other. Benson knew straight away his luck was in and straight away he tried to mount Kez. I don’t know what Kez was expecting, but for sure it was not what Benson was going to do and she wasn’t having none of it, pulling away and wanting to get back into the car as quick as possible. A big disappointment for Benson as it meant that Kez would have to artificial inseminated. The Ai was done and Kez will go back on Monday to be done again. Now it is a case of keeping our fingers crossed.    Photos is Benson and Kez

Over the many years we have lived at Denbury Farm we have always had Buzzard nesting. Although we have looked high and low we have never found a nest. They build 2 or 3 nests and will use them in alternative years. Last year they were nesting very close to the farm house in the wood. We saw both the parents and their young hunting the valley. The fledgling very often on a post waiting for their feed. This year they are at the other end of the valley nesting deep in the woods at the top of a high tree. the parents can be seen using the thermals to soar high in the sky and hovering above seeking rabbits and vermin to feed themselves and their chicks.

Over he weekend friends visited to check out our wildlife. They often come and give us interesting sightings. On searching the wood they came across this years nesting site. The parents gave the location away for instead of trying to distract them in the wrong direction as they were very noisy trying to get the chicks to leave the nest. Yesterday afternoon we spent an hour  to find the nest searching the area they had seen them. This time the adults were flying above calling out to distract us. It worked, after an hour we gave up and waited in the adjacent field in the hope they would go back to the nest. It didn’t happen. This evening  we heard the chicks calling. Chances are they have not fledged.