What to do if there have been no sightings?

[AimzOx]

Hello everyone!

I’m new to this site, but have loved hedgehogs forever!

I moved from a small coastal town to a suburb around 6 years ago, and have gone from two full-on families of hedgehogs to not seeing one since I moved!

We have a brick wall surrounding the garden, but my question is, if there have been no sightings locally should we bother with the hole in the wall? I’ve looked on the map and there have been 5 sightings in the village, albeit on the other (more leafy) side.

I’d love to encourage some pigs to our garden, but not sure how to?

We live in an older neighbourhood, and the neighbours behind us regularly used to put poison down in case of rats/mice (until I went and had a word with them), so not sure how they’d welcome hedgepigs.

Any tips or advice?

[Nic]

Hi AimzOx

Welcome to the Forum.

First of all you do need to make a hole or holes in your wall. Choose your place carefully and try to encourage neighbours to link their gardens as well. If there are hogs in the village it’s quite possible they would visit your garden as well. (also you can’t be certain that all hogs in the area have been put on the map) Hogs can travel a mile or two in a night. Hogs need several gardens to find suffcient natural food. If the hogs can travel from garden to garden it makes it less likely that they will need to cross roads, so will also be safer from that point of view.
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/help-hedgehogs/link-your-garden/

Most people are quite happy to have hogs around, even if they don’t like rats and mice. So fingers crossed that will be the case this time.

Then you need to make your garden hedgehog friendly. Some tips from Hedgehog Street:
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/help-hedgehogs/helpful-garden-features/

If you wish, you may like to provide a hog house:
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/help-hedgehogs/hedgehog-homes/

Or provide some hog food:
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/help-hedgehogs/feed-hedgehogs/

Good luck. Hope some hogs decide to pay your garden a visit.

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