Présentation Vienne Nature journée naturaliste

This video was first shown at the "Journée Naturaliste" of Vienne Nature which took place at Poitiers, France on the 25th November 2017.

The video begins by showing the first views we had of badger cubs emerging from the sett, which is located in the Vienne region of France, on the 26th March 2017. The limited amount of scientific literature that we as members of the general public have available to us would seem to suggest that badger cubs emerge after having spent the first 8 to 10 weeks of their life out of sight in the sett. So we can assume that the cubs were born around the middle to end of January. We have also read that mating takes place postpartum, i.e shortly after the birth of the cubs.

By looking back through our video record we were able to locate the first instance of mating which took place on the 23rd January 2017. We had assumed that post-partum mating might take place in the period of days or weeks following the birth of the cubs but in our case we believe we may have evidence that mating took place only minutes after the birth. On that particular night Pixie (our female) actively followed Nick (our male) whereas previously she seemed to avoid him and had denied him access to parts of the sett at times. She also appeared to deposit something because after mating, which lasted nearly an hour, Nick can be seen lapping from the ground where they had been. Our assumption is that this is the afterbirth and we therefore conclude that she had probably given birth earlier that same evening.