Country Diary: Gloucester shire

The big animal story in the county in recent weeks has been the wild boar population in the Forest of Dean. And that is, at least, a change from the usual complaints from the Forest about the sheep, held under common grazing regulations, which regularly appear on the roads and graze over the hedges into cottage gardens, as well as slowing the traffic down and even appearing on the town roads in Cinderford.

On this side of the Severn at the southern end of the Cotswolds, I have not been aware, yet, of any wild boar, but have been concerned about the number of dead badgers - victims of traffic accidents - which are allowed to lie too long beside the road. On a lane I regularly ride through on my bike, one dead badger lay unmoved for almost a fortnight. I kept thinking the local farmer would pick it up and bury it but eventually recognized that he must have been making a political point. If regulations now prevent him burying his own fallen stock on his own land, why, indeed, should he pick up dead badgers? So I phoned the district council, and the badger was gone by the next time I cycled past two days later.

I was riding the back road to Westonbirt yesterday and found another dead badger beside the lane - a young one, last season's cub. Let's hope it's not there too long. But it set me thinking about the disposal of fallen stock. Until the last year or two, the Berkeley hunt kennels would always pick up dead stock, fairly promptly too, to feed the dogs. Since, as one farmer's wife sagely observed to me, "If you've got live stock, you'll always have some dead stock", this was a useful service.