Hi valg and Sally56
Welcome, both, to the forum!
Re. what the birds spill. It really depends quite how much they spill. It’s best for the hogs not to eat sunflower hearts and peanuts, but if they only found the very occasional one, it probably wouldn’t do them too much harm. You might like to try those large saucers you can screw on to the bottom of feeders and if there is a lot, maybe have a clear up before hog arriving time. Then if you provide decent food i.e. cat/dog or good quality hog food, hopefully the hogs would choose to eat that rather than hunt around for the odd sunflower heart which got missed. But it’s unlikely that will be why they disappeared.
There are all sorts of reasons why hogs might go missing. Sadly some may come to harm i.e. roads, strimmers, etc. but sometimes they go missing for other reasons. i.e. someone on their route could have mended their fences (inadvertently blocking the hog route), someone else could have started feeding, etc. At this time of year sometimes the male hoglets initially return to the area they were born, but then gradually disperse a bit to a new area. If it was that, it does mean others may eventually disperse into your area as well. But the hogs may have stayed in your area to start with, to feed up a bit and then gone off exploring the rest of their range. The early returners are normally males and males have larger ranges than females.
Hopefully they, or some other hogs will appear. Good luck and Happy hog watching.
