Tips to keep cats away from hedgehog food
17th August 2020
Leaving out supplementary food for hedgehogs is a great way to help them in your garden. Meaty cat food is recommended, but unsurprisingly when leaving this out for hedgehogs, it can attract… you guessed it – cats!
Luckily there are plenty of ways to ensure that hedgehogs can access this supplementary food, while keeping the curious cats away.
First things first, set up a feeding station with a hedgehog-sized entrance. This can be as simple as an upturned box with a hole cut out.
Tips from Hedgehog Champions
If smaller cats are still squeezing through the entry, here’s some other ideas from our brilliant Hedgehog Champions.
- Baffles inside the box: Adding bricks or walls within the feeding station, as shown below, will make it harder for larger animals like cats to get to the food.
- Reduce the height: Use bricks to reduce the height of the ‘corridor’ the cats were not able to get through – unable to flatten to get through a low height and turn to get round the obstacles as well. The hogs managed to get through fine.
- Water at the entry: Putting a dish of water at the entrance will deter cats as they don’t like to get their paws wet!
- Sprinkle the food (dried kitten biscuits) on a bit of lawn – it not only encourages the hogs’ natural foraging abilities but takes longer for cats to eat all the food, giving the hogs a good chance to get some of it.
- Food choice: Some people have found that cats don’t seem to like dried hedgehog-specific food (magpies do like it but are not around at night).
The video below shows a hedgehog navigating around the barriers to get to the food.
If you have any other top tips for keeping cats away, please get in touch so we can share them – hedgehog@ptes.org
