New hedgehog in garden
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A hedgehog, quite large, appears to taken advantage of a shelter we built for stray and wild cats in our back garden.
Several cats visit us and we leave food out. Last year one had 3 kittens under the shed. I built the shelter and they moved in. Unfortunately the mom was riddled with ulcers and couldn’t be saved. Two kittens didn’t make it but we managed to home the third. He likes to use the shelter as do a couple of others occasionally. He won’t use the shelter now that the hedgehog has moved in. Also not seeing other cats as often.
I would like to move the hedgehog to a different home and hopefully the cats will use the shelter and everyone will be happy.
Any suggestions on how to do this.Hi Glenmc
It’s quite refreshing that cats on this occasion aren’t the problem. More often people are trying to find ways to prevent them eating the hedgehogs’ food!
If the hog is a male he might move on after a few days anyway (they do tend to move nests fairly often in the Summer), but you could try getting/building a hog house and he might decide to move in there instead. But it would really need to be a case of him choosing. If it’s a female hog planning on producing young in the cat shelter, you should do your best not to disturb her.
Of course I have no idea how large this cat shelter is, so no idea how silly it might sound suggesting maybe another cat shelter?! Hogs can be very perverse at times and turn their noses up at a lovely hog house, only to nest under a shed.
Here is some info. about hog houses:
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/help-hedgehogs/hedgehog-homes/I can confirm hedgies can be a bit weird re: nest sites. I bought a lovely Hoghouse, placed it under a bush, dry grass already inside, so all that was needed was to move in – no effort required. A few weeks back a likely pregnant hoggy turns up and spends about 7-8 hours (up to about 10am) tearing up my lawn to drag grass to a nest she’s decided to make by the back fence under some tarp. Now I know she’s aware of the luxurious hoghouse as she checked it out the night before, but nope, prefers to make her own under some tarp.
Good news is a few weeks later a giant hedgehog I call the Megahog has moved in to the Hoghouse. He can barely squeeze himself in he is so big, but he seems to like it and he and the lady hog have had some huffing action around the feeding station so there’s plenty of hoggy action taking place at the moment where I am.
Besides Mamahog (pregnant femaile) and Megahog (giant male) I’ve seen Discohog (runs about and heavy white markings via nightvision so might be marked by neighbours dunno) and an as yet unnamed one who might be female with a white dot on her forehead. So yeah hoggies seem to be doing ok in my neighbourhood which is nice.
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