Well, Hedge Pigs really. I hadn’t seen hedgehogs in my garden for years, but this year I’ve had two or three adults visiting most nights. I had my suspicions when I kept noticing a very neat corner of the buggy nibbles I put out for the birds in the ground feeder tray had been eaten away. I’ve managed to watch them feeding a few times and found them mooching about in the garden too.

I’ve always considered my garden to be wildlife friendly, but I have been adding a few things and making a few changes to improve the habitat and hopefully increase the wildlife.  I’ve left more parts of the garden to go wild by only cutting back new growth where it’s in the way. This is an easy thing to do and it costs nothing, I’ve also been planting more wildlife friendly plants in order to encourage more insects into the garden. I’ve also installed a new nest box, the old one fell apart, which was used by a pair of Blue Tits a few weeks after putting it up.

  

Hedgehog - Ben Hall (rspb-images.com)

If you have hedgehogs in your garden, I thought I’d outline a few do’s and don’ts and give you some pointers about their hibernation habits. It’s long been thought that hedgehogs hibernate in the autumn and don’t wake until the spring. We now know this isn’t true. Depending on the weather hedgehogs will start hibernating around October time. This is why you need to be careful about bonfires on and around November 5th.  The best advice is to build them on the day or go to an organised firework event. If the weather is mild the hedgehogs can wake periodically during the winter. However, it takes them a lot of energy to wake so they are likely to be hungry. A hedgehog needs to be about 600g in weight before hibernating, so if you find one in your garden which is a good size and is fit and healthy, leave it alone, it will hibernate when it’s ready. A hedgehog will use 20% of its body weight to hibernate, so if you find one which is underweight and we have a cold winter, you’ll need to find an animal welfare charity to care for it over the winter months. Now is a great time to put a ‘hogitat’ in your garden to give your hedgehogs somewhere safe to hibernate.

Food – Some dos and don’ts

  • Don’t give them milk, they are lactose intolerant and milk can make them quite ill
  • Don’t feed them bread. Bread isn’t very nutritional and just bloats them up (combined with milk it’s even worse)

  • Do put out fresh water
  • Do feed them cat or dog food including dried cat biscuits as these won’t go off as quickly as the fresh food or hedgehog food

If you find a hedgehog out in the open asleep in the winter, it needs help as it won’t be hibernating. You need to pick it up and bring it indoors (gardening gloves are a good idea).  Place the hedgehog on a towel on top of a hot water bottle and call the RSPCA on 0300 1234 999. You can also look on the Help Wildlife web site below to see if there is someone nearby who can help.

You can view the hogitats and hedgehog food we sell on the link below, where there is additional advice on where best to site your hogitat.

http://shopping.rspb.org.uk/birds-wildlife/wildlife/mammals.html

http://shopping.rspb.org.uk/birds-wildlife/wildlife/mammals.html

http://www.helpwildlife.co.uk/index.php