Where have my hogs gone
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After 3 months of nightly visits by 2 hedgehogs for food they have stopped turning up. They didn’t exactly get on but strange they have both stopped. Why would this be ?
Perhaps a neighbour is feeding tastier food? It does seem strange that both have gone AWOL. One may have been run over, but two?
Hi Hector
There are all sorts of reasons why they might have gone AWOL, other than that they have come to harm. They may be males. Males have bigger ranges than females so they don’t always turn up every night to all food sources. Also once the females are around, large amounts of their time can be taken up with circling females. Then someone may have repaired fences along their route (bearing in mind that males can travel 2 miles a night there is a fair amount of scope for that), or as Cecil hinted at, they may be being offered food nearer to where they’re coming from.
Hopefully eventually some hogs will return, so I would keep offering food and water in case. Good luck
The hedgehog that had been visiting my garden nightly since coming out of hibernation around the 20th March hasn’t been seen for about a week. I had 2 or 3 visiting for a couple of weeks then it went back down to just one again, and since middle of last week no hogs taking food or spotted on trail cams. I’ll keep putting out food though because I think a similar thing happened last year. I wonder if they feed up when first out of hibernation and now can find enough food from different places. Also would the females stay in their nests more if they had young?
Hi MissJeanBirdie
Yes, you are right. The males will usually feed up when they first return. The females normally return a bit later and then a fair amount of time is spent looking for females and the doing the courtship ‘dance’ – otherwise known as circling! That sometimes goes on for hours so uses up a lot of both male and female hogs’ time.
But as the year goes on, there is likely to be more natural food, as well as more people potentially beginning to put food out for the hogs. Then of course it is possible that some females have young now. I suspect they are likely not to travel so far for food at those times.
I think you are doing the right thing continuing to offer food and water.
Hi, we have been feeding hedgehogs now for about three years, we can also recognise them and give them names, but every year at least one goes on the
missing list for a week or two. I get concerned when I do not see them and think the worse, then suddenly they just come back. Perhaps they have been on their holidays!I think this also highlights how vulnerable some populations of hedgehogs are. The average lifespan is around 3-5 years, so unless you have good recruitment and a mix of animals of different ages then one or two animals can make a difference to local numbers.
A lot of people are “sharing” hogs. We are fortunate, at present, we get good numbers but we know they of course also visit neighbours gardens and like cats sometimes they find someone else they prefer to live with !! We are close to open countryside and I would like to think that the increasing numbers in local gardens will also find their way back to the hedgerows as well.
Colin.
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