New Hogs in the Street :)

[cheruk]

I have lived here for 10 years, and for the first time, I was driving home and 100 yards from my house I spotted a hedgehog trying to cross the road. It was about 11.45pm. I stopped the car so he could cross but he thought better of it and scuttled back and up the path, where he disappeared under a hedge.

So lovely to see him/her! Hope to see more.

Chrissy

[Hettie]

Well done for stopping.
If you have a hedgehog[s] locally, I understand they go quite a distance every night.
If you’d like to experiment? my local pound shop offers bags of dried mealworms as bird food.
Quite by chance I discovered that
1. Hedgehogs love these!
2. Can smell them from afar! [ evidence – I put some out after midnight and very often see my visitors within 20 minutes ]
Good news is my local fox doesn’t like them, and if they get left your local robins and blackbirds won’t let them go to waste!
I think people of a certain age get a big thrill seeing what was so common when we were kids?

[Nic]

Hi Hettie

Just a word of caution about dried mealworms. Hedgehogs do love them, but they have low nutritional value and should really only be offered as a snack or as an addition to some other food. The hogs can apparently become a bit addicted to them, especially the hoglets – when they are around – and refuse to eat anything else, which is not good for them. Think of them as like crisps for humans.

Try offering them some hedgehog food, or cat or dog food, meat varieties, not fish, or kitten biscuits. You can get some hog foods which are less appealing to cats, etc. And of course lots of water. They do drink a lot, especially if they have been eating dry food and water is not always easy for them to find. Once you have one hog visiting, you will often get others. I always think they must follow each others trails, to see what everyone else has been up to!

You will find from the forum that people have come up with all sorts of ingenious devices to keep cats/foxes from the hog food. Some more successful than others!

Cheruk. I add well dones to Hetties’ for managing to stop for the hedgehog. If there is one around, it is very likely that there will be more. If you want to feed the hogs, try some of the suggestions which I have made to Hettie, above.

Of course, the best thing we can all do for the hedgehogs is to try to make our gardens better habitats for them, as well as linking them, so that they can find natural food. There are lots of tips on this site.

Happy Hedgehog watching, both.

[Author]

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