Hi Paul
I know that you only mean to be of help to the hedgehogs – as I, and I believe all of us on the Forum do. I am sure, that you are being of great help to them by providing them with supplementary food. But, there is always more we can all learn about them.
It’s great that you have read Pat Morris book, ‘Hedgehogs’. It’s a really good book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in hedgehogs. There is a wealth of very interesting information in it. However, he did originally write it quite a long time ago. In those days not as many people watched hedgehogs. Now there are so many people watching them, that if everyone started artificially marking the hedgehogs it’s possible there would barely be a hedgehog without artificial markings on it – which, I and many others, would find to be a sad state of affairs.
It is easily possible to recognise the comparatively few hedgehogs which visit one garden, by their natural markings. I have, in the past, had 12 different hedgehogs which visited regularly and which I recognised by their natural markings (plus hoglets). It is something which just does not occur to many people, but is in fact easier than it sounds. I can direct you to some tips if you are interested in trying. But as mentioned, if hedgehogs are going to be marked it should be only on a very few spines with water based substance (which doesn’t tend to smell so strongly) as described in British Hedgehog Preservation Society FAQs “Can I ‘mark’ my hedgehogs” https://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/faq/
But a lot of pleasure can be derived from watching hedgehogs even without knowing individual characters. The sad thing about hedgehogs is that sometimes they simply disappear and we have no way of knowing whether or how they may have died – even if we can recognise individual hedgehogs. In some ways, it leads to less heartache if we don’t recognise individuals and don’t become too attached to them.
Providing good nutritious supplementary food for the hedgehogs is fine, i.e. hedgehog/cat/dog food or cat/kitten biscuits. (As you say even more important in times of dry weather). Although creating good habitat for them so they can find natural food is also important (and expanding their habitat by linking gardens). Access to water is also vitally important. Quite wide, but shallow plant saucers are ideal for water and I leave it out 24 hours a day, in case a dehydrated hedgehog comes out during the day time.
The sort of eggs hedgehogs would eat in the wild, would be likely to be smaller bird eggs. I believe Pat Morris did comment on the fact that his data about how many eggs hedgehogs ate may have been exaggerated by the fact that much of the data came from trapped hedgehogs which came from gamekeepers, who baited their traps with eggs. Bearing that in mind, it seems entirely likely that an average hedgehog’s diet doesn’t consist of 1/8 eggs. It is, of course, illegal to trap hedgehogs now, certainly in this country. But, because hedgehogs have been persecuted for eating eggs, they are just not something that I, personally, would want to encourage them to eat. Hedgehog/cat/dog food should be sufficient as supplementary food without them.
Regarding bread and milk. It has now become fairly common knowledge that hedgehogs are lactose intolerant (possibly since the book was originally written). It’s a while since I read Pat Morris’ section on bread and milk. But, as I recall, he did point out that it caused diarrhoea in hedgehogs and also the dangers of that, particularly for young hedgehogs. These days when hedgehogs have become even more scarce, we wouldn’t want to risk giving hedgehogs diarrhoea, or worse, when we know there are better things to supplementary feed them and water is all they need to drink.
I hope that has covered the things you have raised. Good luck with the hedgehogs. I hope they continue to do well.
