What Happens To That Poor Badger?

First, though, I want to take a moment and explain where these badgers come from and what happens to them. Unfortunately, the badger does have to be killed. I’ve seen websites that claim that their badger hair is shaved off of farm-raised badgers. OK, good luck with that one! Badgers, although normally docile creatures who would rather run away than fight, can fight off larger animals for food and are extremely vicious when cornered. Personally, I’m not going to try to shave one or even get close enough to pet one.

The badgers that supply the bristles for shaving brushes come from the Eurasian Badger, which is common throughout Asia and Europe. The bristles themselves are imported mostly from China and some from Russia, mainly because the population of badgers in Europe is not overwhelming. In China however, badger populations are relatively unchecked by natural predators and when they become too numerous for the natural food supply, they tend to attack chickens (and sometimes lambs) in the local farms. As such, the local populations keep the badger population in check. In doing so, they use the meat for food and sell the hair to the government to be exported. Know that China and Russia have strict controls over how much hair is exported, so they don’t allow too much culling by the locals. Not to mention that Europe and America have strict import controls to ensure that any badger hair brought in meets environmental and trade agreements.

This process creates a small, but manageable supply of badger hair for consumers, as well as money supply at the local level, all the while protecting the overall population of badgers in the region.

Shaving Brush Bristles

As mentioned before, the other part of a shaving brush is its bristles. Bristles, unlike handles, are only made from three general materials; synthetic, boar bristle, or badger hair. Synthetic bristles can be made from several synthetics, but overall are very poor shave brushes. They don’t hold water well at all, and can be very stiff, which is not pleasing to the skin. The only advantages to synthetic bristles are; 1) they’re hypo-allergenic, so if you’re allergic to natural bristles, this is your only other choice, 2) they’re cheap, although a boar bristle brush won’t cost much more and holds water much better, and 3) they’re not made from animals, so if you have a real problem buying a product made with animal parts, you can still have the wet shaving experience without harming animals.

Boar bristle brushes, as I’ve said, hold water better than synthetics and don’t cost any more really, but they’re still a little stiff on your skin. That stiffness does work well with hard shaving soaps, though.

The real choice for a shaving brush, though, is the badger hair brush. Despite all our technological advances since shaving brushes have been around, no material has yet been found that works better than natural badger hair. Badger hair is perfect for shaving brushes. The same properties that insulate the badger from the cold allow excellent water retention, and these particular badgers are in large supply (I’ll talk about this in the next topic). There are three accepted grades of badger hair; Pure Badger, Best Badger, and Silvertip (sometimes call Super) Badger depend on what part of the badger’s body the hair comes from. I’ll go over the differences between grades in a later post.

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