Bossy Hedgehog!!
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I have a Hedgehog house in my front garden. It gets visited every night from Spring to Autumn. I change it every Sunday and put fresh newspapers and meadow hay inside. When I went on holiday this year a neighbour kept up the feeding but I forgot to ask her to clean the Hog House on Sunday. Obviously the hog did not approve, it grabbed hold of the newspapers and hay and somehow pulled it all out of it’s house, took it to next doors garden and left it there!! Also, I add a few mealworms to it’s food and one night I ran out of them so the Hog pulled it’s little dish out and left it in the open to tell me I had forgotten something!!
Of course, I also feed a fox was very grateful for the remaining Hedgehog bikkys!!!
Hi Quilly16
Yes, hogs can be quite fussy little things! A lot of them seem to prefer to do their own interior decorations, which is why I usually suggest leaving bedding nearby so they can choose what they take in. It is not uncommon for them to chuck out bedding kindly put in their houses by a human! Hogs in the wild shouldn’t need their houses cleaned out every week (they don’t normally mess in their nests) so it sounds as if that particular hog is particularly fussy! Or looking at it another way not so fussy that it minds a not built by hog nest in the first place!
Although do you mean the hog house is being used as a feed box, rather than for sleeping in? That would need cleaning out more often as they quite often seem to poo around feeding stations.
It’s best to give the mealworms a miss completely, due to the problems with phosphorus/calcium imbalance, so they don’t ‘get a taste’ for them at all. Hogs do tend to get very stuck in their ways, but the beginning of a new hog season is a good time to change what you feed them, if necessary. When they are hungry after hibernation they are less likely to be so fussy. It’s just up to us to offer them food that is as good for them as we can manage. Cat/dog/meaty hog food (as recommended by BHPS and Hedgehog Street) should be treat enough for them and they shouldn’t need any more ‘snacks’ – which are a peculiarly human thing. If I were you, I would cut out the mealworm ‘garnish’ and stick to the hedgehog bikkys.
I hope all goes well with the hog and that he/she has a successful hibernation time. Good luck.
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