Hi knb2501
Sounds promising. It’s good that you’re providing water. The most important thing is to provide water as that is something they may not be able to find in the wild, at all. I normally leave some available all day every day. A female with hoglets may come out during the day to have a break and welcome and drink.
The feeding is really a personal choice. She sounds as if she’s been doing ok without you feeding, but if she’s about to have hoglets may welcome a bit more than usual. But natural food is best for them and if everyone made their gardens hog friendly so that the hogs could find enough food in the wild, that would be the ideal. Sadly we aren’t at that stage at the moment. Also, hogs need lots of gardens to sustain them – which is why linking gardens with hedgehog highways is so important.
If you’re going to offer supplementary food, normally it’s best to feed cat/dog/hog food or cat/kitten biscuits, but with potential rats and foxes sounds as if there is something else which will eat any of that. You could make a feeding station which would exclude the foxes (lots of ideas on the forum or the gallery), but that wouldn’t work for rats. But some rats aren’t bothered with cat food – although I had one here once who carried off the kitten biscuits meant for the hogs, seemingly to cache them.
