How many Hedgehogs?

[LaminateKitten]

Hi there

We have been feeding the local Hedgehogs since last year and use a Hogilo as a feeding station (It wasn’t stout enough for long term use as a hibernaculum).

Assuming cats can’t get in and we can hear hedgehogs munching away in the box and they leave their calling cards behind (Poo!) How many do we have?

We feed them 1 pouch of Felix ‘As Good As It Looks’ Chicken flavour and approximately 175 Grammes of Mr Johnsons Hedgehog Food per night. It is usually all gone in the morning.

And as an aside they are very fussy, refusing to eat Spikes and Natures Feast, even when mixing them up, they just leave the Spikes and Natures Feast Biscuits behind. I mixed up a whole bag once and then we had to ‘unmix’, them the next day as we didn’t want to offend the poor chaps.

[Nic]

Hi LaminateKitten

Lovely to hear you have hedgehogs. It sounds as if they have you right under their paws!

It isn’t possible to tell how many hedgehogs are visiting by how much they eat. What we feed them is supplementary to what they find to eat in the wild, so that some hedgehogs will inevitably eat more of the food we offer than others do. Even if you were able to see how many hedgehog visits there were a night, some of the visits could still be one hog visiting several times. Although it is possible to learn to recognise individual hedgehogs by their natural markings, which is something you might want to explore.

Hedgehogs are a bit inclined to like sticking to the sort of food they have become used to. So that if you mix it with another kind of food, they are likely to show a preference for the original food. If you were to give them only the alternative food (and it was suitable) they would be likely to eat it eventually if they were hungry. Although they might ‘go on strike’ for a few days to start with. The best time to introduce a new sort of food is just after hibernation, when they are hungry and likely to eat what they’re given.

Make sure you always leave a source of water out of the hogs, all day every day, just in case a dehydrated hedghog should come along. Large, wide but shallow plant saucers are ideal for water.

Good luck. I hope you continue to enjoy the hedgehogs’ visits.

[LaminateKitten]

Thank you for the detailed reply, it is very helpful.

When the lockdown is over we may buy a wildlife camera from the local photography shop.

[FuzzyG]

We have a Victure camera which is motion sensitive and you might want to have a look at them because the quality is pretty good and they have a easy set up and mount.

hope that was any help.

FuzzyG

[Author]

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