The Lemon Fool

Our rather large garden has been transformed into a cross between a wildlife/cottage garden. Spotted a hedgehog there a couple of weeks ago and have installed a hedgehog house deep in the bushes and have been putting out hedgehog food, which always gone next day. Just been to put tonight's food there and spotted 'Spike' at the entrance to the house hopefully waiting for his supper. I've been using mainly mealworm which we also put out for the birds - apparently hedgehogs like these.

Strangely satisfying having our own hedgehog (although it could be more than one apparently).

Any do's or don'ts that we should be aware of? I've seen hedgehog food on Amazon and wondered if this is better than mealworm and catfood (meatly sort only). Spike seems to prefer mealworms.

Thanks

Good for you but please, please, stop the supply of mealworms. They are great for birds but very very bad for hedgehogs. Mealworms are a bit like chocolate or alcohol for humans, hedgehogs become addicted to them but not for the good. Food good to provide for hedgehogs includes wet cat food (meat type not fish) and the properly formulated hedgehog foods you can buy. They also need a constant supply of water and can't always find it. So bowls of water out there are good. N.B. A very few mealworms won't do a hedgehog any harm but lots of mealworms are very very bad news for our spiky friends. Obviously in addition don't spray noxious stuff like weedkiller and pesticide around your garden nor use slug killers and the like. Hedgehogs eat slugs as part of their diet but they don't need slugs laced with slug killer.

Lynn

midnightcatprowl wrote:Hedgehogs eat slugs as part of their diet but they don't need slugs laced with slug killer. Lynn

One of ours did not eat the slugs that were removed from the veggie bed and placed close to its nose (no slug killer).
Just sniffed at them and passed on by.

Perhaps it was full up, but I got the feeling that slugs were either not its preferred snack or the wrong kind.

Not seen any hogs recently but there is a visiting badger that could be to blame.

Hi Nemo
No advice on the feeding front but a warning if you have a dog. A few years ago our dog sniffed round a hedgehog and my wife spent hours getting rid of fleas.
Good luck.

Thanks for the advice - much appreciated

I've just ordered some dry hedgehog food for Spike - I was never too sure of the mealworms, which the birds love (they get a mixture of these with wildlife birdseed and peanuts).

No peticides or slug pellets used except for slug pellets in the window boxes at the front of the house. We have two cats (no dog) and it is a wildlife garden after all - we have been here for over thirty years and have never used anything that could harm any wildlife.

We have three small ponds, all with easy access for animals and there is a cascade feeding one of the ponds that is within a few feet of the hedgehog house, so no problem with water as Spike can easily access the water there.

We did seem to get visited by badgers from the nearby woods at one time, but not for a few years. The hedgehog house is weighed down by wood, branches and bark so it won't be too easy to disturb, and hopefully Spike will be safe there.

Thanks again.

Nemo wrote:Any do's or don'ts that we should be aware of?

Probably telling grandma not to suck eggs or whatever the expression is, but don't give it milk, they can't digest it and so it's really *really* bad for them.

Thanks Uncle Ian.

Didn't know about the milk.

Just water and hedgehog food from now on for Spike

They really are the most peculiar animals - quite fascinating. I think that I'll get an infra red camera to see what goes on at night.

Nemo wrote:They really are the most peculiar animals - quite fascinating. I think that I'll get an infra red camera to see what goes on at night.

Noisy mating encounters.

But then who wouldn't with all those prickles.

http://www.mihog.org/anatomy/sounds.phtml

The local handyman we have has just brought a feeding box (basically a wooden box with one side missing and an extended waterproof roof at the top) so that its food will not get wet when it rains.

The hedgehog house we purchased came with a container of Spike's meaty food, so that on the menu for tonight:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spikes-Meaty-F ... B004K30MYW

I didn't realize that the hedgehog was such an endangered species:

The People's Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), a charity which has been running counts of hedgehogs for over a decade and compiled the figures, believes there are now fewer than a million hedgehogs left in the UK, down from an estimated 2 million in the mid-1990s and 36 million in the 1950s. David Wembridge, PTES's surveys officer, said the fall should ring alarm bells.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ic-decline