Hi Stewarty
I can understand you being worried about the foxes, especially as there has been a report recently on the forum of hogs being killed by one. One thing you can do is to make sure that where the hogs eat is well protected so that the foxes can’t get to them when their attention is taken by eating. Also that they have a reasonably safe access/escape route from there into suitable cover.
On a completely different subject. It is best not to feed mealworms, especially at this time of year when there may be new hoglets appearing. They have poor nutritional content for hogs and they can become addicted to them and not want to eat anything else, including their natural ‘wild’ food. You may also have heard about the problems with mealworms and metabolic bone disease where the calcium is leached from the bones causing deformities. So all in all, it’s best not to feed them.
Good luck with the fox dilemma. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that a lot of our wildlife is moving into more built up areas (or more built up areas are surrounding them) and therefore they are competing with each other in closer proximity. One solution is to improve habitat, for all species, in our gardens and of course, from the hedgehogs point of view, in particular, linking the gardens to increase the size of the habitat.
