British Hedgehog Preservation Society
Organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Hedgehog Awareness Week is taking place from 1-7 May 2022. It’s a brilliant means of bringing to our attention the problems hedgehogs face and how we can help. The website is full of downloadable informative leaflets, posters and colourings-in for youngsters.
Nocturnal visitors
Our nocturnal visitors are doing very well since they came out of hibernation. Since early March we’ve been putting Mr Johnson’s hedgehog food in the hedgehog feeding station. All gone the next morning.
If hogs visit your garden, there’ll be signs – deposits (that resemble slugs) left on the lawn and garden path!
How we can help hedgehogs
Create a hedgehog highway
Hogs travel up to 2 miles on their nightly wanderings. Give them access to your garden through a hole in the gate or fence, and be charmed seeing them shuffling through the shrubbery.
Provide a feeding station
Ours is basic and works. A few bricks, access in and out – but not for larger night-prowlers – and a lid to keep the food dry and the hogs safe. Fresh water is essential, particularly in dry weather. But no bread and milk. Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant and milk could kill them.
Make dens
Create safe havens. Piles of logs, sticks and leaf litter will give hogs a place to rest during the day, and somewhere to consider for hibernation later in the year.
Hedgehog hunting
It’s great fun to go hedgehog-hunting in the garden after dark. If startled a hog will stop in his/her tracks until the assumed danger has passed, and then shuffle off into the undergrowth.
Mating time
May is mating time. If you hear loud huffing and puffing it’s likely to be a male courting a female. She’ll give birth to 2-6 hoglets any time between May and September. After 6-8 weeks they’ll leave the nest and begin their solitary nightly explorations.
Hedgehog help
If you see a hog out during the daytime s/he needs help. Capture the creature (wear gardening gloves), gently place in a cardboard box, cover with an old towel and get in touch with your local hedgehog rescue centre or contact the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.
The gardener’s friend
Let’s do all we can to give our prickly friends the help they need to survive.
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