As I said previously, there are people all over the country who would probably swear by what they feed ‘their’ hedgehogs – which is likely to be a huge variety of different brands and types of cat, dog, or hedgehog food – although meaty cat, dog or hedgehog food, with meat as the main ingredient seems a pretty good guide.
Vale Wildlife are widely accepted as being authorities on how to feed and look after hogs. This is their advice: http://www.valewildlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Feeding-wild-hedgehogs.pdf
There are all sorts of myths around. For instance regarding slugs. Some hedgehogs eat slugs and others may not, it doesn’t have anything to do with whether they are desperate or not. Some will eat slugs if there is a bowl of food nearby that they have just been eating from that is not yet empty. They normally eat the smaller or medium sized slugs. Slugs are most likely to be eaten whilst hedgehogs are foraging, so most people would have no idea whether they were eating slugs or not. Some of them are tiny. The large slugs are a bit big for hedgehogs’ small mouths and they normally ignore them. Some people assume that because the hogs ignore those large slugs which are attracted to food, that they do not eat slugs.
Some slugs, no doubt carry parasites which cause lungworm, but that doesn’t mean that all do. But also, writing about the nematode which causes lungworm Pat Morris in the book ‘Hedgehogs’ says: “…. hedgehogs get these parasites as a result of eating worms and slugs within which the parasite larvae are living …..” it later goes on to say “ …It’s perfectly natural and hard to avoid. Sometimes infestations may be sufficiently severe as to result in death but normally a hedgehog carries relatively few of these parasites and the only evidence is their microscopic eggs in the hedgehog’s droppings. ….” People often seem to fail to mention that the nematode which causes lungworm can also be found in worms – which hedgehogs will also eat even if there is other food readily available.
