Badgers are short, stout and powerful animals that can grow up to a metre in length about the height of a four year old child! An adult badger can weigh between 10 – 12kg. Their weight and size make them the UK’s biggest land predator!
Habitat
Badgers are found across the UK and typically live-in open country and woodland. Badgers live underground in ‘setts’. They burrow underground to create their setts which can often extend well over 50 metres in length. They can often have lots of entrances and a very big network of tunnels to navigate through. Often setts are passed down through generations, some setts can be more than 100 years old!
Badgers live in mixed sex groups of between four to eight animals living together in the same sett. These groups are known as a clan. A clan will be made up of male badgers called a boars and female badgers, called a sow, and their young. Although they live in these groups, Badgers are unique as they do not always act as a group. Badgers often forage for food on their own unlike other social groups of animals, like wolves, who would hunt together.
Badgers are nocturnal meaning they sleep through the day and forage for food during the night. They will often come out of their setts at dusk and will return to their sets before sunrise.
Badgers caught on Camera
Diet
Badgers eat a huge range of food and not fussy eaters. They are classed as omnivores meaning they eat a mixture of plants, fruit and other animals! Earthworms are the core of a badger’s diet, often as much as 80 percent. In a single night, an adult badger may eat well over 200 worms! They have a very good sense of smell and sharp claws which are ideal for digging.
In the winter or middle of summer when the ground is very hard or dry, worms can be difficult to find. Badgers can very cleverly shift to other food items such as snails, slugs, and soft fruit like fallen blackberries or raspberries.
Life Cycle
Badgers’ young are called Cubs. Female badgers have one litter per year giving birth to between one to five cubs. Badgers are born in the sett with the Female badgers line with warm bedding materials like hay, straw and grass. Cubs are often born around early to mid-February, and they stay in the sett until around 12-week-old. Cubs stay with their family until just over a year old, some will stay with their family and join the clan whilst others will find their own territory.
Badgers have quite long-life spans in the wild, living about 14 years.