Hello from the West Midlands

[Bodger the badger]

Hello to you all,

I'm early 50's and a very inexperiened gardener. I'm sort fo semi-retired/mid-life sabbatical at present.
My garden is best described as rustic and while tidy and kept it's more for the wildlife than a work of art.
I'm a very avid bird feeder throughout the seasons including live mimi-mealworms in the spring/summer for the fledglings.
Fox (vixen) and hedgehog visit my garden and I've been feeding a family of badgers for a little over 3 years now, depending who turns up each night.
I look forward to posting more in the future and reading others.

 

[MoreRootsMoreFruits]

Hi and welcome

That's a great picture!
Nice to have all that wildlife coming to visit.
We used to get a hedgehog coming in. When we had an outdoor cat I'd leave food out and at night and the hedgehog would come and eat some. Not seen one for a while. Perhaps the neighbours replacing hedges with fences hasn't helped the hedgehog's travel route much but the foxes still come every night.

 

[Bodger the badger]

Hello and thanks very much.
I love my plants but I think the wildlife that visits our gardens is equally important and should be included.
My fox is a more frequent visitor than the hedgehog. Trouble is the badgers are always in first and anything that the fox would eat the badgers would have first so not easy to feed her.
The badgers have done an excellent job of excavating under most of the gravel boards in the surrounding gardens. If the badgers can get in then most of the rest of the wildlife can too.

 

[MoreRootsMoreFruits]

Very interesting.

Usually our fox/foxes come through around 10:30pm though it can vary by about an hour or so and then often come through again on a return journey usually no later than 4:30am.

I don't know much about badgers climbing ability but maybe it would help if you put the fox's food higher up off the ground somehow.
Sometimes I put food up on a plastic patio table for ours and it will jump up onto the table no problem to eat it.

If I notice that there's been more than one fox around I'll sometimes try to spread the food around the place a bit otherwise if it's in one spot they'll fight over it and the male will hog the food to himself. They can make a real noise when they're scrapping over food too.

Unfortunately we don't get badgers in here but I've been out to see them at dusk a couple of times in a woodland not too far away from where I live.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Welcome to the forum.
Check out the 'Animals in your garden' thread, Sean Regan, who is not a million miles from you, has a system for feeding the hedgehog so cats can't get to the food. My experience of badgers is that putting a fence across their route does not stop them, they go straight through it