The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Wildlife => Topic started by: nutterly_uts on August 23, 2015, 07:16:26 pm
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Is anyone else feeding hedgies? Need some ideas of how to make their dish accessable to them but not cats and foxes?!
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I saw a photo posted on Facebook of a dish of hedgehog food being consumed by loads of slugs.
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Back n the 70's i had a client who hand reared a bunch of hedgie babies. She wanted to find a way of marking them so she'd know her hedgies the next year and went to Soho to investigate non-toxic body paints....
...and came back with a whole new perspective...
(mind you she wasn't as daft as the young lady who used to dye her white cat to match her evening outfits. She used food colouring to mix the correct shades)
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http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/wildlife/inthewild/gardenhedgehogs (http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/wildlife/inthewild/gardenhedgehogs)
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Thanks everyone.
Slugs eating the food isn't a problem - slugs are the preferred food.
Think we are going with a slab and house bricks sort of affair
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Or a wooden type box with just a opening the hog could get into maybe although fox may be able to lift it my friend runs a rescue in fife ( forth hedghog rescue) on facebook she may have ideas she's been saying she's had loads of rescues this year including I think it was 12 in one week
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I soak hard dog feed in water, which foxes don't appear to find as interesting. If you see them at a certain time every night put it out for that time - they tend to go on the same round every evening.
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Back in the 1950's, my mother, bless her heart, loved hedgehogs and (having seen them in the garden at dusk) would regularly put out a dish of chopped raw chuck steak at night for them! Her theory was that she would encourage them into her garden and they in turn would eat all the slugs and other harmful insects that ate her vegetables and flowers - it didn't cross her mind that the hedgehogs would appreciate her efforts and just waddle off stuffed with steak, or that the local moggies would have a midnight feast at her expense! :-))
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This week I saw the first hedgehog since we moved here 3.5 years ago. It had fallen into the bottom of one of the holes OH was digging to put new gate posts in. Hedgehog retrieved, I put out some water and cat food for it. Went back 2 mins later and the hedgehog had disappeared very quickly (must have been Sonic the hedgehog) but the food and water remained.
Later my dog went out and ate all signs of food :-)