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Home Forums Champions’ chat Can you overfeed? Reply To: Can you overfeed?

#15535
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Nic

Hi HogHosp

Thanks for confirming that fruit is not good for hogs.

That’s actually quite funny – the idea of trying to force the hogs to come to eat when you can see them! They will come when they want to! But the point is, unlike in hog hospitals, what we feed hogs in the wild is supposed to be only supplementary to what they can find for themselves, so that not leaving food out all night should not be a problem for them. They have the rest of the night to forage for wild food (or find artificial food elsewhere). It just happens to sometimes have the effect that the hogs choose to time their visits to coincide with when the food is available – providing the added bonus of the opportunity of seeing them in real time.

Many people may think they are leaving food out all night, which may in fact be being eaten by cats and rats, etc. so that the food is not there all night, anyway. Cats will over-eat. For some people it may, of necessity, be a case of leaving food out only for short periods or not at all.

By the way there was one particular hedgehog recently who achieved some notoriety for being overweight – including appearances on TV – Countryfile, if I’m remembering correctly, was one programme.

Ideally, we would be paying far more attention to improving and increasing the hogs’ habitat so that they can find food for themselves, which is much better for them than any artificial food we offer them. That is, as I see it, the main aim of Hedgehog Street. Still a long way to go, but I dream of the day when enough of us have made our gardens hedgehog friendly (and linked them) so that the hogs no longer have to rely on artificial food at all.

Hedgehog