Advice needed

[gtaylor]

I am looking for some advice, we have 3 hedgehogs visit us each night, we have put hedgehog houses up which have hay in them, the hedgehogs visit the feeding area from 7pm through to around 8am, the patten seems to be feed go back into the house for around an hour back out for a feed and drink of water, back in this patten repeats throughout the night, all 3 have been feeding to the same patten, it has been -3 for past 3 night and they have continued to feed and drink. Do I need to weigh them as they are smallish, not good a guessing weights, leave alone as they all do seem healthy and content with this patten, it seems that two of them are sharing one of the houses, houses are waterproof and dry and situated under a pile of logs, just don’t want to go interfering when not needed, could they feed all winter, we do have much larger ones which visited up until autumn, but it seems they have gone into hibernation.

Any advice on this would be great fully received

Regards Gary

[stef]

Are they living in the houses? Are they bigger than tennis ball size? If so I would be inclined just to continue to monitor, that way if one stops coming then you can ‘rescue’ it
Yes they can feed all winter – hogs don’t need to hibernate and as long as you are providing good food they may decide not to.
A tip to watch for is if they start to taper off coming then it’s likely they are looking to hibernate and time to weigh them

[antiguaannie]

My 3 hogs have been active upto 3 weeks ago am presuming they have hibernated with weather warmer still put food out for them and it disappears think they are under decking or in their house don’t no but food is going

[Ginnimilner]

I have a hedgehog hibernated in my hedgehog house. Should I remove the nest and put some new bedding in, or leave it as it is?

[Nic]

Hi Ginnimilner

If you are absolutely certain that the hog has vacated the hog house, you could clean it out. Ideally it needs cleaning before another hogs might move in – not least due to the possibility of external parasites or their eggs.

Check carefully that there is not still a hog in residence – some may still be hibernating.

Boiling water needs to be used to clean out hog houses to kill any potential parasite eggs. Don’t use chemicals.

More information here:

https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/cleaning-out-boxes/

After it’s cleaned you could put in a handfull of material to give them the idea, but otherwise it’s best to leave it to the hogs to choose their ‘furnishings’. So make sure there is material in the neighbourhood which they could use.

Good luck

[Author]

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