Living with badgers
Badgers are nocturnal wildlife wanderers who emerge at night to play, forage and move between setts. They’ll even travel through your garden or outdoor space to do so. On this page, you’ll learn how to spot signs of a badger in your garden and how to keep badgers, pets and your space safe.
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Badgers in the garden
Badgers are nocturnal, and spend a lot of time below ground in winter, so are most often seen at night in warmer weather. You may see them in your garden as they travel between setts or search for food, but often badgers move through the night unseen and unheard, leaving only small traces behind.
How to spot badgers
The most common signs that a badger has stopped by include:
Tracks
Badgers have kidney-shaped pads on their paws, with five forward-pointing toes and long claws, leaving behind distinctive badger tracks. If you find any, they may lead you to a badger sett (if so, please don’t disturb it)!
Poo (scat)
Badgers deposit their droppings in communal areas known as latrines. You can find these at the border of badger territories. You’ll see the ground has been disturbed, with scat deposits in small holes. Badger poo looks firm and sausage-shaped, but if they’ve eaten a lot of worms, it can appear soft, dark and slimy. Their droppings smell sweet and musky.
Snuffle hole
Snuffle holes are small, shallow pits in the ground, dug by the badger’s snout, to sniff out food like earthworms and grubs. These look like torn-up patches of grass on lawns, conically shaped, with soil scattered around them.
How to spot them safely
You could try setting up a wildlife camera in your garden, to watch for any badgers who may pop by.
If you’ve located a sett, to safely observe the badgers, sit still and quietly at a safe and respectful distance around dusk (as badgers are shy, and it’s illegal to disturb them and their setts). Position yourself downwind to prevent badgers from catching your scent. You may have to sit patiently before the badgers emerge. If the badgers don’t appear, they may have realised you’re there and exit from elsewhere, or wait until you’ve left.
How to tell if a badger sett is nearby
Look out for:
- The entrance: Sett entrances are oval.
- The tunnel: Sett tunnels are often around 30cm in diameter, and are wide rather than tall.
- Soil heaps: Setts typically have soil heaps around the entrance from the badgers’ digging. (Note: If the soil appears to be freshly removed, this could be a sign that the sett is currently in use).
- Badger hairs: You might find these wiry, coarse, white hairs (tipped with a black band) in the soil around a suspected sett.
- Bedding materials: The soil heaps may also contain bedding material, such as dry grass, leaves, straw and moss.
- Tracks: Badgers stick to the same paths (called pads) when moving between setts, wearing them down. You may be able to spot their pawprints in these, or see tracks in the soil heap around the sett.
- Scratches: Badgers scratch against dead trees near their setts to stretch and mark their territory using the scent glands between their toes.
When established badger homes and pathways are removed or damaged by people, badgers are the ones who must adapt or die.
How to help badgers
The best way to help badgers is to let them be. Avoid approaching or interfering with badgers and their setts (harming or disturbing them is illegal). Instead, aim to live alongside them peacefully. Badgers usually enter your garden simply to forage or pass through.
If you have a garden or outdoor feature that may be hazardous to badgers, such as a swimming pool or large wildlife pond, you can make it badger-safe by providing a plank or slope in the water as an exit route for badgers who may have fallen in.
Badgers sometimes hide in a corner of a garden or in a shed if they feel sick, are injured or frightened – if you find one who looks unwell or injured, call us on 0300 1234 999 or report your concern.
Feeding badgers
You can help badgers when their natural supply of food is low – during dry summers or long periods of cold weather – by giving them small amounts of the following:
- Wet cat or dog food
- Root vegetables like carrots
- Cooked potato
- Fruits like apples, plums or pears
- Nuts like unsalted peanuts or Brazil nuts
- Specialist badger food
If food remains uneaten overnight, get rid of any that may go off and replace it with fresh food.
Note: Be careful when feeding wildlife. Only feed small amounts so badgers don't become dependent on non-natural food supplies, or you as a source of them. And don’t provide food if it encourages badgers to cross a busy road.
Spotted a sick or injured badger?
From unlawful badger baiting to traffic accidents, badgers and their cubs are commonly injured or even killed by human activities. If you find a sick, injured or dead badger, learn how you can help.
Badgers and pets
Badgers are the UK’s largest land predator – but they’re not aggressive animals (unless they feel threatened).
They’re playful with badgers within their clan, but naturally shy when it comes to other mammals. Badgers live in harmony alongside other animals that benefit from their sett – like rabbits and red foxes, for example – and often disappear when people appear.
This means that typically, badgers won’t attack your pets.
Should a badger and a cat meet, for example, they may show signs of curiosity then wander off. If either were hostile to the other, both badgers and cats prefer to retreat if they can. They’d rather head home than engage in a fight.
However, some pets do pose a risk to badgers. Dogs have historically been used in badger digging and badger baiting (both illegal) to trap badgers in their setts (to then be dragged out), or pit against badgers to fight.
To keep both badgers and dogs safe make sure to:
Keep your dog indoors at night
Bring your dog inside when it’s dark, as this is when badgers are likely to be around. If they do go out at night, make sure to supervise them.
Use a lead near known setts
If you’re out near a known badger sett – or where a sett may be – ensure your dog is on a lead to prevent them from running off and into the sett entrance.
Practise good recall
If your dog is off the lead, ensure they’re able to return when called.
Be careful if leaving out food
If you put out food for badgers, make sure your dog can’t access it.
Walk your dog responsibly
Walking your dog responsibly is the best way to ensure animals and people are kept safe.
If your dog enters a badger sett
Do NOT attempt to dig it out. Digging is both illegal and can put you, your dog and badgers in danger. Instead, you should:
- Check to see if your dog has actually gone inside the sett: There’s a chance they may have just run past, not into, the entrance or hole.
- Monitor the hole and any exists: Your dog may come out on their own.
- Make a note of your location: Using landmarks, road signs or a What3Words reference for your exact whereabouts.
- Contact us on 0300 1234 999: You can also reach out to Badger Trust or your local badger group.
How to deter badgers from your garden
If your garden is on a badger’s regular route (their pad), there’s a chance the badgers are causing accidental damage on their way through.
To stop badgers eating your fruit and vegetable patches or rummaging through other sources of food, try these safe badger deterrents:
- Put a fence around your fruit and vegetable patches
- Clear away any fruit that has blown from trees onto the lawn
- Securely close your outside bins
- If you leave out food for birds, do so on bird tables or in feeders
- Remove whatever’s attracting the badgers completely – food left outside for pets, for example
Badgers may also trample tidy lawns, digging for insects or using them as a toilet and marking their territory.
A badger digging your lawn is a good sign that your garden is a happy habitat for invertebrates and other wildlife. This disruption only tends to happen in late autumn and early spring, so it's best to tolerate the temporary damage; the grass will grow back quickly.
There are no legal badger repellents available to stop badgers digging up your lawn, and it’s illegal to use any substance to deter badgers from your garden. It’s also illegal to harm a badger or damage their sett.
Badger laws and offences
Badgers have faced much human cruelty over the decades, from badger digging to unfair mistreatment due to Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB). Fortunately, in 1973, badgers were finally granted rightful legal protection.
It’s illegal to injure or kill a badger and destroy, disturb or damage a badger sett.
Badgers are protected by the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, which makes it an offence to:
- Kill or injure or take a badger (except under licence)
- Cruelly ill-treat a badger
- Use certain prohibited firearms
- Dig for a badger
- Damage or destroy a badger sett or obstruct access to it
- Disturb a badger in their sett
- Cause a dog to enter a badger sett
- Tag or mark any badger (except under licence)
Report a badger accident or crime
If you’ve spotted a new badger sett location, a badger road casualty or a dead badger in the road, or suspicious or illegal activities affecting badgers and their setts – including badger baiting or digging – report it confidentially to The Badger Trust.
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