Hooray! Hedgehogs in my garden
- This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 4 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I’ve just seen two hedgehogs in my garden (urban Bognor). They were very snuffly with one another, so hopefully they’re courting. We saw one hog last year – the first sighting for years, although we’d had the occasional jobbie.
There’s a small strip of uncultivated land with trees at the end of our garden and we cut a big hole for the foxes.
I’m very excited, I just hope I didn’t frighten them.
I’m off to knit some bootees!Hi Julie
Great news you have hogs there. The courtship consists of the male circling the female. She turns round and round, so she is always facing the front of him, and huffs as she goes. So if that is what you saw, then at the very least it sounds like a male and female. Although the courtship circling doesn’t always lead to anything, fingers crossed it did that time and for some hoglets later on.
update: we bought a trail camera and have seen a male and female hedgehog (separately) nearly every night for over a week. Extra good news, the female had the most enormous teats (bit personal!) so appears to be feeding someone.
I felt quite sorry for her, they were practically dragging on the ground – can’t be very comfortable.
I’m hoping we’ll see them on camera.Great you have little ones, doesn’t sound so good for mummy though!
Keep us posted if you see them.
We are a bit down the coast from you in Littlehampton and haven’t had much luck with hoglets this year as we think mummy has died. We know of 2 tiny babies that have died and one that hopefully is doing well at Brent Lodge.
Fingers crossed for your little ones.Just sat and watched a hedgehog eating the mealworm dinner! At last! I’ve been putting mealworms and adding water in a hedgehog bowl every night for about 2 months. Always gone in the morning. Tonight went out later to find it next to the bowl. Sat quietly next to it and watched it eat! A real treat!
Hi-
Great news that you have a hedgehog visitor and so lucky that you are getting to see him.
RE Food- DO NOT feed peanuts,sunflowers or meal worms. The hedgehogs LOVE these but they are not good for them and can cause brittle bones. They can also become addicted and need to be weaned off. Maybe reduce the meal worms by half mixed with something else and keep reducing.Specialist hedgehog food like Spikes or ARK (online) hedgehog food or good quality meat flavoured cat/kitten/dog food. Wet or dry though I have found that wet food has attracted foxes in the past. It is also very important to leave out shallow dishes of water. A dehydrated hedgehog can not eat. I am not an expert but that is what I have learnt from this site.
There are lots of threads on here about feeding if you can find them
Good luck and keep us postedHi Vwyatt
That’s really lovely that you have a hog there and are enjoying it’s visits.
Simbo65 is right, though, you really need to try to wean it off the mealworms. They have an imbalance of phosphorous and calcium which causes calcium to leach from the bones of the hogs. Cat/dog/hog foods (including cat/kitten biscuits) are the best things to feed and hopefully will lead to healthier hogs. If the hog won’t eat the new diet immediately give it a few mealworms with it, just to start with, as Simbo65 suggests and gradually reduce them. It is particularly important at this time of year, when there are hoglets around, not to have mealworms available – hoglets are even more at risk, being that bit smaller.
Water, of course very important (preferably 24 hours a day), but make sure any container is not so deep that a hoglet could get stuck in it.
Hope you manage to wean your hog visitor off the mealworms fairly easily. Good luck.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
