Support your local hedgehogs

What can we do?

1)Make your garden accessible

Add a hole to the bottom of fences to allow Hedgehog highways

to become established and hedgehogs to get into the garden.

2)Make your garden hog friendly

Re-establish plentiful food for hogs by encouraging insect prey that is not infected with lungworm parasites that cause hogs so many problems. These include caterpillars, beetles, millipedes.

Insect populations can be helped by allowing longer areas of grass and vegetation to develop, planting of wildflowers and building of logpiles to be used as beetle and bug hotels.

Provide a feeding station. This can be made simply from an upturned plastic box with a CD case sized (13cm square) hole in the side and a brick or heavy item on top.

T his ensures the food is safe from local cats and foxes and gives the

hog a covered, dry area to feed in. A bowl of kitten, cat or hedgehog

food and a dish of water can make all the difference to struggling hogs.

Trail cameras/Ring cameras can allow wildlife to be watched and

is really useful to help spot limping and injured hedgehogs before

they become ill enough to come out in the day.

3)Avoid or remove garden hazards

DO NOT STRIM areas of long grass without first checking carefully for any wildlife including hedgehogs that maybe hiding or living in the long grass. Every year all rescues receive casualties who have be caught by a strimmer and it results in severe often life limiting injuries which are completely avoidable.

Provide an escape route from all ponds/bodies of water and cover swimming pools when not in use. Every year many hedgehogs drown in water and this is completely avoidable with care

Remove log roll edging to gardens. Hogs commonly

get their legs stuck between the logs leading to fractures.

Raise all netting when not in use. Many hogs get trapped in football

nets and suffer constriction injuries, pain and dehydration when they are

unable to escape. Vegetable netting when in place in vegetable beds

must be raised at least 20cm off the ground so wildlife can get

underneath and not get trapped

Pick up any litter is left lying around in which wildlife can become trapped in or injured by.

Avoid use of common poisons like slug bait and rat bait. If rat poison has to be used then it must be via bait blocks in an enclosed box from which the bait cannot be removed. The box should be raised off the ground to avoid entry by any small hogs that maybe able to squeeze into the small opening of the rat bait boxes.

If bonfires have to be lit in a garden they must be moved just prior to use and check again prior to lighting to ensure no creatures are inside.

Control pet dogs. Whilst cats generally cause hedgehogs no harm pet dogs are increasingly disturbing and destroying hedgehog nests and more and more hogs are coming into rescues with bite wounds from domestic pets. It is essential if a hog is resident in the garden or nesting any dogs must be kept under control in that area, nest areas should be fenced off from the dog and dogs not let out after dark unless on a lead.

It is a privilege to have a hog nesting in your garden and it is our responsibility to do as much as possible to ensure the mum can raise her babies in safety