Dead hedgehog

[HRH Princess Spikey]

This morning I found a dead hedgehog in my back garden. It had been decapitated with bits of flesh, skull and snout laying around. The main body appeared intact. It was a fairly small hedgehog about a third of the size of the larger males. I don’t have a dog and my 2 cats seem to try and avoid the hedgehogs. Any ideas? Could another hedgehog have done this? Fox?

[Nic]

Hi HRH Princess Spikey

That must have been very distressing for you discovering that.

Sadly, it’s impossible to say what might have done that, although I suspect not another hog. If you have foxes around, one of them could be the culprit, but that is a complete guess with only a small element of process of elimination – youngsters sometimes play with hogs, but are more likely to injure, ie. back legs. It seems odd if it was an adult fox (which sometimes do kill and eat hogs) that it didn’t eat part of the main body – unless it was disturbed.

So, sorry, I can’t be much help, but I hope there aren’t any other similar instances. Not a nice thing to find.

[Hotspur Hog]

Hi

I’m new to this forum and have a question please. We have several regular visitors to our garden and have been feeding them for several years without any issues. Recently I found two dead hogs within the space of a week and apart from some damage caused by Magpies (post-mortem I think) there was no obvious cause. I’m worried that they might have picked up some bug from the area below our nearby bird feeding station (they were close to it) although it’s never happened before. Is there a safe disinfectant we can use to wash and clean the area?

[Mags63]

Could the decapitated hog have been the victim of a badger?

[Author]

Posts