I’m really sorry to hear that you’ve also experienced a badger attack. Other than blocking badger access to your garden but still maintaining access to hedgehogs, I don’t see any other solutions. Badgers can climb as well, although how well will depend on individual badgers. It’s a tough call really, like you, we also love badgers and were really surprised to see one in suburbia. However we want to try to help hogs. So we asked ourselves do we feed in our secure garden which brings the hogs around the area in possible badgers range, or don’t feed. Okay not feeding may help keep them out of our area a bit, but not much as I would think they would still try to find food around this area anyway. Badgers have a large territory area so they will be around the whole village I should think. Although we managed to save that one hog that was attacked outside our house, we are currently worrying about all the others we were feeding. The other night I could hear the same sound in the far distance, wasn’t cats or foxes, the barn owl can compete but I felt sure that was a badger attack but it was an awful long way away.
Up until one week ago we had at least nine, possibly more hedgehogs appearing each night (hard to tell the others apart to know for sure the exact figures) Now all of a sudden we don’t have any visiting at all for the last week, all I’ve done is worry constantly about their whereabouts. Okay some could be pregnant with a late brood somewhere, but that still doesn’t account for all the others. We sleep with the windows open so would hear local attacks, but this sudden lack of all the hogs is worrying. There’s no evidence of any killed around on the roads that we can see. When the hogs were visiting they were all healthy eating well and moving fast. Just vanished, I’m actually trying not to think about it too much as my mind has come up with all sorts of reasons as to their whereabouts and most are not good reasons. It pays not to get attached but in our experience of feeding wildlife we’ve found that impossible.
