Hi Pam Sue
Your garden sounds lovely! A good idea to have a feeding station in the front garden as well.
Re. the little hogs – I agree, the tennis ball sized one sounds to me as if it really needed rescuing. That is small at this time of year. Otherwise for the ones visiting your garden the advice now is hogs over 450g can survive hibernation. Please see https://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/autumn-juveniles – from BHPS – which gives lots of other useful information, too. It might be a good idea to weigh at least one of any hoglets which visit, so that you get an idea of size. Maybe the little one your neighbour saw might turn up at yours sometime.
Some hogs (especially hoglets, it seems) decide not to hibernate at all but an extra hog box would probably be welcome in case they changed their mind or as a place to nap between snacks of food. It seems counter intuitive but I’ve found that the hogs which have not hibernated here haven’t seemed to mind the cold and still turned up in well sub-zero temperatures. But they did seem to welcome somewhere for the occasional nap. The usual hogs still turned up last night and it was quite frosty here.
If anyone still has hogs visiting, I would continue to provide some food (dried cat/kitten biscuits are ideal as there is no problem with freezing) and it’s also very important to provide a water source all day, every day, even if you are not sure whether hogs are still around or not. Hogs which hibernate are known to sometimes move nests during hibernation time and might welcome a drink even if no-one else does.
I hope all the hogs there do well and have a successful hibernation time, one way or another. Good luck to them all.
