Hedgehogs

[rock-roll]

Iv had 3 hedgehog 🦔 come to feed at eat my location over the lasts couple off months, but just the one for a week.

[Nic]

Hi rock-roll

Good to hear you’ve had hog visitors there. Don’t worry about numbers suddenly decreasing for a while. It happens from time to time at different times of the year. A female, for instance might be off having hoglets somewhere and not travel as far afield for a while. But males also will go walkabout. They have quite big ranges so maybe are concentrating on another area for a while. I would keep leaving some food and water out. Hopefully, more hogs will eventually return. It would be nice if one brought some hoglets with it!

Good luck and happy hog watching!

[rosieyvonne]

Hi Nic

I have not been on this forum for a while since i wasn’t seeing any signs of hedge hogs only rats for some reason this year on my camera . I stopped putting food out and didn’t see any rats on my camera once the food was gone .
I then started with food again and i was getting both a rat and hedge hogs . i haven’t seen more than one rat at a time . Not sure if it’s a different rats at a time or just one . Anyway i started to see big hedge hogs coming and going but now i have hoglets i assume now away from mum sleeping in my hedge hog house . Just worried maybe the rat might go near it while it’s sleeping in the house ? . I’ve bought a humane catcher but scared the hoglets will go into it which scares me more . Just looking for your take on this as you have given good advice before to me
i’ve also see 3 dead hedgehogs on the road so far too which is sad. 😔
Thanks Yvonne x

[Nic]

Hi Yvonne

Really good news you have hogs back – and hoglets too – brilliant. Sorry about the dead ones on the road, though.

Yes, rats are a complete pest, but they tend not to like cat/dog food so much. So you might want to try that. But if you feed the birds, you also need to make absolutely certain that no bird food is accessible to the rat. It’s often the bird food that initially attracts them.

I would make sure that where you feed the hogs is well away from where the hoglets are nesting.

Sadly, hogs can and have been caught in ‘humane’ traps. I don’t know whether more modern ones have made any adaptations to prevent that. But you could try only leaving it out only during the day and check regularly to make sure no hog gets in there and release them if they do. Theoretically the hogs shouldn’t be out during the day, but some might venture out especially during hot weather. Rats often are out during daylight time. But if the rats have access to any food other than what’s in the trap they are likely to go for the easy food.

The following is a link which has several other links about previous posts re. rats. There’s quite a bit there (and much of it repeated), but you might find something which helps deter the rats.
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/rat-probelm/

Good luck. Hope the hoglets continue to do well.

[Author]

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