Hi mikesouth
I believe that often if there are badgers in an area, there aren’t hedgehogs. Whether that is because the hedgehogs have decided to keep clear or whether the population has diminished because badgers have been eating hogs, I don’t know. But hogs aren’t safe with badgers around.
You might like to read https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/hedgehog-predated-by-badger/ from the forum, recently.
It’s possible, in your case, it was a badger passing through, who having found a food source hung around for a while. But if the badger is resident in the area the hogs may not return. Personally, I wouldn’t want to risk feeding the hogs if there are resident badgers around. They would be a sitting target.
The ideal thing for hogs is to make your garden as good a habitat for them as you can, so that they can find natural food – as well as linking as many gardens together as possible via a hedgehogs highway. If the hogs decided to stay in the area, despite the badgers, finding natural food would give them a better chance of evading the badgers. Better habitat for hogs would also be better habitat for badgers – less likely they would need to kill hedgehogs if there was plenty of other natural food around.
Sorry, probably not, entirely, what you wanted to hear. But, also possible a female could go missing for a while when producing youngsters.
