We had a call about a badger found on the road at Pulborough and this was taken by us to Alphapet
vets in Bognor Regis. Later that day a vet phoned to say they were keeping badger in to check on
injuries but found she was lactating. So immediately we went out to the location in Pulborough
where the badger had been knocked down.
After an exhausting investigation of the area on both sides of the road, up banks, through fields and
even a graveyard, we came to the conclusion that the sett entrances were in a large garden at the
precise location where the the badger was hit.
So very kindly the owners of the property allowed us access telling us they knew there was a sett
there, as they had three badger cubs on their lawn last year. We now started to investigate the
entrances listening for cubs crying and also deciding which entrances were actively being used.
The owner of the house offered to put up a trail camera overnight with food so to encourage the
cubs to be seen, from that we would decide if they needed intervention or not. We then left with
the arrangement to be there next day with an endoscope to hopefully tell us if cubs at home.
After driving to Guildford to collect the Endoscope from Dave Williams of Sussex Badger group, we
then went back to the garden and looked to find the cubs. On the camera from the owners house, it
had only shown a fox eating the food.
A few hours later and looking with the endoscope we haven’t reached an opinion and still no cubs
seen, so we venture above the garden sett and find two new sett entrances and decided to come back
the next day to put up two cameras, maybe the cubs are in there?
Back next day, food left at the new entrances and two cameras, and two days later we returned to
collect them. Saw on the laptop three adult badgers milling around, so made a decision to leave the
cameras for longer, food again left there.
This time cameras were left for longer and eventually we went back to collect them, our assumption
being, no badger cubs in this area. That was until we got a call from the house owner telling us that
two badger cubs were in a cage in his garage, his dog had been barking all morning and found one
down the side of the garage and the other one in a hedge. So we collected them up, had a good look
around just incase there was a third one, although we knew the dog would of found it, and took
them straight to Alphapet Vets as they would probably be dehydrated and hungry. The sad piece to
this story was that Mum who had been at Alphapets Vets for ten days was sadly put to sleep the
night before we found the cubs, as she had not recovered from her injuries.