I recently laid a small 30sqm section of turf for a client only for several of the turfs to be pulled up by animals over night. Foxes or fiox cubs the most likely culprit based on the area. Badgers not really seen in the area. Muntjacs are seen, but no signs of prints in the soil.
The area had been prepared six weeks prior with no signs of animal distrubance, and there was no sign of foraging under the turfs so my assumption is animals "playing".
Reset the turfs and covered the area in hessian I usually use for protecting seeded area. Also piled up left over off cuts of turf nearby as a distraction. This worked for the most part, though the hessian did get pulled up and has had to be reset a few times.
Never had this happen before so looking for advice on how others combat this problem. This was admitedly the first time I've used Rolawn turf, which was very light weight in comparrison to other heavy sod turfs I've used previously, which I think fox cubs would struggle to pull up.
Thanks, Jason
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We experienced a similar issue on freshly laid 1400 sqmts, nightmare! Also at this time of year, in our case it was magpies and crows, tried various types of bird scarers with minimal effect and had to redo around 250 sqmts fortunately customer paid. Suspect it is birds as our site has a fox and badger population. Guess the birds are after grubs and we saw the birds pulling the turf rolls back, eventually the problem stopped presumably after the food source was gone.
It will most likely be birds, thinking there are cockchafers or leather jackets under the turf, I have used fishing line with hazard tape fixed to to deter them, for the most part it worked but there are some stubborn buggers out there that it just will not stop.
If it was playing activity, I would suspect foxes. We've seen them cause havoc, particularly with leakypipe irrigation which they love to pull out and chew. I would have expected there to be disturbance before turfing if it was something after grubs. Did you use a pre-turf fertilizer, and could it have had bonemeal in it?