The food I leave out is still disappearing with great gusto 🙂
Sometimes the straw indicator placed at the entrance of a hog house remains in place for a day or two, indicating that either a hog has gone somewhere else to sleep (I suspect some bed-swapping goes on), or is inside having a long nap.
My hogs seemed to have been spoiled feeding Whiskas cat food in jelly.
(They obviously don’t like the jelly, so I spend time removing as much as I can to put in the fox dish with other scraps).
I’ve tried a cheaper brand of cat food, but they are spoiled now 🙁
I’m still getting through a tin and a bit each night.
I feed just before dusk and re-fill empty plates before going to bed, all gone by morning (I was thinking maybe I should put out even more food, but remembered that there is plenty of natural food around, so no one is likely to be going hungry).
I also offer dried cat food, but they may nibble at it, but not much is taken, and I’ve tried a couple of brands.
As hibernation approaches, and the wet cat food starts to be left in the dish, I want to continue to leave out dried food only. With them not showing much interest in the dried cat food, I’m wondering if I should try a specific hedgehog feed, and which one?
I’m also looking forward to the day that the hogs come out of hibernation and I can clean out their homes in the Spring, and wondering just when to do this.
If they are still using the homes for day-time sleeping, I don’t really feel right about turfing them out for a Spring clean.
(A few years ago I created some ‘hedgehog opportunities’ by rolling some chicken wire into a tube, wrapping layers of newspaper around the tube, placing it all in a plastic bag and filling it with leaves before stuffing it beneath the hedge. Come the Spring I was doing a general garden tidy, tipped the leaves out of the (I thought empty) tube and out rolled not just one, but three hogs! I abandoned this type of nest when one of the tubes was raided and emptied by a fox one winter, now I make sure all homes are fox-proof, but worry about piles of leaves etc being used when there is not enough fox-proof homes to go around. I suppose nature will take it’s course. Foxes and hedgehogs have rubbed along long before I arrived on scene).
I do wonder if some of my houses have multiple occupation though.
