what animal has stolen my carrots?

artichoke

Hi

I have just been up to the veg plot to see how things are going along and found my carrots have all gone:mad:

Last night when i was up there at about 6pm everything was normal but now the soil has been dug up and is all over the side of the raised bed and it looks like an animal has burrowed around and got ALL the carrots out.

Nothing else has been touched but they have put soil all over the lettuces in the next row......

so what animal do we think this is and how do i prevent it?

I live in a rural area and have a cow field on 3 sides of my garden.

Badgers, foxes, rats, rabbits, hares are all seen in the cow field....

is one of them the likely suspect?

agghgh - i was going to have some carrots for tea tonight in my stir fry.... why did they not take the radish i have far too many of them:eek:

art

zarazara

oh no! could be rabbits,or mice or even badgers ,or human.......................

ALIBOBSY

Are you sure it was an animal, or could someone have come up and dug em up for their tea? Seems to more reports of thefts on lotties these days.
Otherwise I would imagine its rabbits, our pet lop ears go mad for carrots. If it is rabbits you are looking at physical barriers, but the trouble is you have to remeber they dig and jump as well.

ali x

artichoke

I am pretty certain it is not human - we live in a remote area and the way the soil is scrapped up and over the side of the beds looks like an animal has done it....

It looks like something has either pushed the soil with its nose or with its paws and made furrows in the bed....

Maybe i need chicken wire around the raised beds?

i am going to check the rest of the raised beds to see if there are any other signs..

this happened when it was really snowy in the winter when something dug up all my jerusalem artichokes.... i thought then that i was the badgers desperate for food...


art

jay1981

We had same last year and it turned out to be rats, nothing else touched apart from the carrotts and we could see rat droppings in the soil that had been dug

Lotus-eater

I would guess badgers, especially if it is as dry where you are, as we are here.

artichoke

hi

i am still not sure but really hope we have not got a rat problem again...

The neighbours got the council in last year as the rats were so fearless they were coming right up to the back doors and walking along the window sills....

my veg growing, and compost bins got the blame....

aghgh

please let it have been a badger...

art

SallyForth_2

If it were rabbits, there would be evidence. They would go for other veggies as well, and there will be round pellet like droppings.

zarazara

any news? was it rats?:eek::eek:

GZN

I have been having my carrots nibbled all around the tops this year, so having dug them all up I left them in a tray near the back door. They have been stolen in a way that makes me understand the phrase 'clean away'. No footprints or disturbance, and not even any little nibbled bits lying around. We are talking about 5 or 6lbs in a night! We live very rurally so it's definitely not humans! A couple of years ago, I did have a shed smashed to bits up to a height of nearly a metre, wood ripped and tossed aside to a distance of 2 metres. We thought that was badgers. Perhaps they have been training a stealth team this year!