Home › Forums › Champions’ chat › Foraging in dry weather › Reply To: Foraging in dry weather
HI Simbo65
Hopefully most people who’ve been visiting Hedgehog Street for any length of time will have got the message about the danger of mealworms, by now. Although new people may not. I actually wondered whether the mention of them earlier in this strand was a typo and they meant to say calci-worms. It would be an easy mistake to make, even if not helpful to the hogs.
Just to repeat again for anyone else who reads this. Mealworms are not good for hogs because they have an imblance of phosphorous and calcium, which can lead to the calcium being leached from the bones. It can lead to bone problems in adults and deformities in hoglets. Sadly, hogs love them and can become ‘addicted’ and not want to eat anything else. So that whilst one person may think it’s o.k. to feed a small amount, if others nearby are thinking the same thing, the hog potentially could go round to the different places and just eat the mealworms from each place. So it’s better not to feed mealworms at all to hedgehogs.
The following is some information from Vale Wildlife
http://www.valewildlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Feeding-wild-hedgehogs.pdf