Hi everyone, we've been feeding hedgehogs since they came out of hibernation this year. We are very lucky and sometimes get three or four a night, though that has dwindled naturally as the year has gone on. I have two hog feeding stations and use dry biscuits, semi-moist feed, and a wet cat-food style food, rotating them every few days, but usually offer more than one food type each night. The hogs have without fail been clearing all food (and leaving their little, or sometimes big, presents around the garden to prove it...). As of about three weeks ago, they stopped taking any food - just very abdruptly stopped. I use trail cams so i know that hogs are still visiting regularly, but they ignore the feeding stations now. They don't even go inside them anymore. Just wondered if anyone has had a similar experience. Could it be they have other priorities right now, like building hibernation nests, or maybe there is more natural food to forage (we have a very 'buggy' garden and lots of slugs right now). In previous years we've had it where hogs stop visiting for a few weeks/months and then turn up again, but never had it where they are still around, but not taking any food at all (wood mice are happy with this situaion i should add - more for them!). It just seems so sudden and abrupt!
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Mine here have always devoured the Tesco brand kitten biscuits but they recently changed the formula & hoggies all over the Country have refused to eat them ... this caused much angst as you can imagine but the posters on 'HH' all chipped in with what successes, or not, they'd had with alternative dry & wet food! I personally tried Purina but it's quite pricey ... found Iams kitten on Amazon slightly more reasonable, also started to put out Whiskas chicken in jelly (tins more reasonable than sachets) for the babies in order to fatten them up quickly, seems to have been a successful combination so far! Wet food has to be fresh every day as flies are laying eggs in anything left over, usually only the jelly! Certainly I will post your question, see what response there is!
Edit: Have now posted, question has gone to Admin for their approval to publish, hope for replies soon!
Ouch! That's mighty expensive in comparison!! It's the grain proportion to protein content that has to be checked as many really cheap ones are bulked out with too much cereal!
I started off using Spike's dry & semi- moist but not very well received by my original Mum who turned up with three babies in tow out of the blue three years ago now!
Few more comments Neil ... I have been getting less hog visits over the past few weeks with some nights the food looking like it has not been touched. I live in North Yorkshire and we have had a mixture of cold, damp, windy and also still some mild weather. Not sure where the hogs have all gone! I usually have two or three but all seemed to stop coming all of a sudden which was a little worrying, nearly everyone seems to have had the same happen to theirs. bit bothered about one that I was watching that was a baby earlier in the year that wasn't big enough for hibernation yet. Mine stopped eating for a bit and I was getting fewer visitors, but this week there have been several visits starting from 8pm all the way through to 6.30am and all three bowls were empty this morning (except for crumbs) They can be finnicky
Mine has stopped eating the wet food and suddenly only eating the dried that they haven't really bothered with before.