Home › Forums › Carers / rescuing a hedgehog › Will my hogs come back › Reply To: Will my hogs come back
Hi TinyTot66
As I wrote above badgers are the main wild predator of hedgehogs. I also wrote above ” I have also heard of a situation where they had been fed side by side where a badger suddenly turned on a hog and killed it, despite there being plenty of other food around.”. So it is clearly possible that badgers will attack hedgehogs even if they are not struggling to find food. So I would continue to do your best to keep them well apart, if I were you. I am sure the last thing you want is to see a badger tucking in to one of your hedgehog visitors. Having said that, hedgehogs will sometimes vote with their feet and avoid the area if they know badgers are around, so they may do that.
Badgers have strong claws which can easily rip through wood, so having a slate roof is not necessarily a deterrant to them. We had reports on the forum in the past of a wooden hog feeding box being ripped apart by badgers. It’s easy enough for a badger to turn over a hog box.
Just bear in mind that badgers are wild animals. It is their instinct to hunt for their prey animals. That instinct is not going to go away just because they are offered some artificial food as well.
I see from your other post https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/why-do-hogs-visit-every-night-for-about-a-week-then-just-vanish/ that you have had a problem with hogs ‘vanishing’. Maybe they have decided it is not safe to visit your garden with all those badgers around. Sometimes you just need to settle for one species visiting, or the other.
I hope the position sorts itself out without any fatalities. Good luck.