The gardener's best friend
Hedgehogs do not eat your fruit and veg — they are meat and insect eaters. Beetles, grubs, woodlice, worms, slugs and caterpillars are all on the menu, so hedgehogs help your flowers, fruit and veg to grow by eating the bugs that harm them.
They're also now on the red list as endangered. If we don't value all our wildlife and try to redress some of the damage we're doing to our environment, we will all suffer — and sadly we don't tend to value things until they're lost.
What to feed — and what never to feed
Kitten biscuits and meaty pet food
- Kitten biscuits with a good meat content — hedgehogs are always hungry and can smell meaty things from quite a way away.
- Tinned or pouched dog/cat food with high meat content.
- If you buy "hedgehog food", stick to Brambles or Spike — most other brands have had no research done and tend to be damaging. Shop hedgehog food is not regulated, so don't assume the picture on the bag means it's safe.
These genuinely harm hedgehogs
- Bread or milk — hedgehogs can't digest them.
- Mealworms, dried worms or calci worms — they draw calcium from the bones and cause metabolic bone disease.
- Sunflower hearts or peanuts — same bone disease, and peanut halves get stuck in their palate, leaving them unable to eat or drink.
- Sweet things — their teeth rot, often leading to gum disease, abscesses in the mouth, and sepsis.
Please feed in winter too
Hedgehogs used to hibernate from October–November until March. Hibernation needs temperatures of 5°C or less for five consecutive days — and nowadays the weather keeps waking them up, hungry and thirsty. So please feed all year.
They may disappear for ten days or so, but they will come back searching for their trusty food supply!
Use a feeding station
Putting the food inside a feeding station keeps it dry and stops cats and other animals pinching it. You can easily make one from a plastic box with a hole cut in the side (a curved tube or reducing collar on the hole keeps cats out) — or the rescue makes cat-proof ones.
Always put water out
Building works have culverted many streams and filled in ponds, so a poor little hedgehog may face a long walk to find water. A shallow bowl of water can be a lifesaver — a plant pot base with a few pebbles in it is perfect (the pebbles stop bees drowning), and chicken water fountains work well too.
Top it up in hot weather and check it isn't frozen in cold — it matters most at the extremes.
Make your garden a hedgehog haven
A hole in the fence changes everything
Make sure there's a gap under your gate or fence, or make a hole — it only needs to be fist-sized, about a CD case. If everyone joins in this creates a "hedgehog highway", letting hedgehogs meet, mate, and find enough food to stay alive.
Wild corners and hedgehog houses
Leave some areas of wilderness where hedgehogs can snuffle for insects, and consider a hedgehog house in a quiet part of the garden.
Bed it with straw packed in tight — never hay, which goes mouldy in damp weather. The rescue can point you to really lovely, strong, secure hedgehog houses.
Things that quietly kill hedgehogs
- Slug pellets and other chemicals — poison the food chain hedgehogs depend on.
- Black sacks left lying around — hedgehogs nest in them.
- Forking compost heaps without checking for hedgehogs first.
- Bonfires lit without checking for hedgehogs underneath.
- Cat or dog flea spray on a hedgehog — it will harm them.
- Picking up fit and well hedgehogs, day or night — at night they freeze until you've gone, so hang back and let them get on with it.
The truth about fleas and ticks
"All hedgehogs have fleas" — an old wives' tale
Hedgehogs do NOT all have fleas. If a hedgehog is covered in fleas it is almost always ill and needs help. And hedgehog fleas are host-specific: they don't live on cats, dogs, humans or in houses, so your pets can't catch them.
Ticks aren't a problem unless there are lots — but don't try to remove them yourself; a rescue will do it safely.
How you can help the rescue
Donations that make a real difference
- Tins of dog and cat food — we much prefer tins, as we can recycle them. Pouches have to be thrown away, which is bad for the environment.
- Kitten biscuits with a good meat content.
- Clean newspapers — the broad sheets are especially useful (magazines aren't, sadly).
- Raffle and stall items — anything saleable in good condition helps fund the rescue.
Please don't buy generic "hedgehog food" to donate — it's unregulated and often full of unsuitable ingredients. The everyday items above are exactly what the hedgehogs in our care get through fastest.