Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

A lot of what happens on the smallholding can be out of your control: the weather is an obvious example although if you have animals that can be housed and food brought into them, the impact here can be lessened. Predators and pests are another matter however! Having had the fox scare yesterday, we weren't then too impressed to see that the badger decided it was his turn to visit last night, digging up the grass by the polytunnel as he went, probably looking for worms. Badgers are powerful animals; they are very efficient diggers and if given access to a poultry house, can cause just as much destruction as a fox.
Badgers' absolute favourite food are earthworms, amounting to about half of their total food intake. They can eat up to 200 in just one day and because of the moisture in the worm, the badger doesn't need to drink. Eating worms does not make them a gardener's best friend as not only do they dig up grass (as in the photo) but they then eat the worms they find, earthworms of course being a gardener's TOP best friend!!
Badgers also eat mice, rats, voles, beetles, eggs, fruit, fungi making them an omnivore (eating meat and plants). As with all wildlife, badgers are very welcome on our holding as long as they leave the grass and poultry alone!!!
And so to the toad (middle photo): whilst the enormous slug in the end photo (over three inches long) may be a tad too large for him (at the moment), it was nonetheless great to see this little fella just outside our barn. Toads are very welcome as they eat slugs and flies as part of their diet: it's just a shame the slugs outnumber them by about 200 to one!!! But then again, badgers eat slugs too!!!