Feeding station
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I made a feeding station as it was raining, a plastic box with one entry point. Big mistake, as another massive hedgie put their head in and wouldn’t ket little one out which went into panic, so lifted lid to ket them out, will now make a second hole in box, as hedgie was bery stressed.
Hi pugwash, poor little hog! I can’t say I’ve had the same problem. Our feeding station is made from an underbed storage, box with one entrance and bricks to form a corridor. However, my hubby suggested two entrances as there’s not much room to turn round if two are in there (hence poo in food dishes). I have bought an extra long underbed box now, (yes there are two sizes) and we intend to put two entrance/exits in it. It should enable us to make a corridor at each end to deter the cats from pinching the food and for the food to be placed in the middle. Then again, maybe not, as I’ve just realised one may decide to climb over the food to get out the other end! Back to the drawing board… These things are sent to try us… Your large hog may have just been inquisitive, it was a new structure and he could smell food! Best wishes.
To be honest you can try all sorts of convoluted structures but you will NOT stop them pooing in the food dishes. It appears to be a hedgehog tradition: “I’m not eating that until I’ve had a poo in it first”.
Hi williamc, thanks for that, hope you are well and your hogs. My two little ones are dainty eaters and don’t cause a bit of mess! They poo outside the box! I tend to agree with Nic here, it’s nervousness when a couple are in the box together, or, when it’s difficult to turn round and they end up with the back end in the food! Big Benny usually poos in the box but not in the food. To be honest, I’m having more trouble with massive slugs, wow, are they huge this year. We have a colony of snails, but it got a bit depleted in a very cold spell the other year. Up till then I hardly saw a slug. Snails I can live with as they are food for Blackbirds and Thrushes, but nothing wants these slugs and I think it is they that cause lung worm with the slime trail (well it does with dogs, when they follow the trail with their nose). I have made a salt box grave out of an ice cream box. Sorry, yes it’s gruesome, but I have to change all the food in the box when they’ve been leaving their trail slime all over it. It’s such a waste of food. Best wishes.
Hi Annker
Yes, the pooing at food stations could possibly be nervousness. Very difficult to prove that one way or the other!
Re. the slugs. The hogs don’t eat those big ones, which actually perform an important role in the garden, breaking down fallen vegetation, etc. It’s the smaller ones that the hogs eat. But if you create a salt box you might kill all types of them and there isn’t any guarantee that a hog might not try to eat one, which wouldn’t do it a lot of good, I wouldn’t have thought. You would also be depriving the hogs of some of their potential wild food.
Hogs have been around for millions of years. I don’t know how long slugs have been around, but probably a long time, too, when hedgehogs would have been co-existing with them and also any parasites. Whilst it may be serious if a hog gets a bad dose of lungworm, there are probably many which have some lungworm and are symptomless, other than a few microscopic eggs in their droppings.
If you really don’t like the slugs near the hog food, I would take steps to make it unpleasant for them to reach it. i.e. build a frame which the hogs can easily step over (surrounding the feeding area) with copper tape around it, or an area with gravel/eggshells which they are less likely to want to travel over, etc. Sheeps wool seems to work as well. I haven’t tried any of these myself in relation to hog food, even though I also get plenty of slugs visiting, but they are all things which gardeners use to keep slugs off plants, so might work. Worth a try, anyway.
Hi Nic, many thanks for your post. I have only been killing the massive slugs, that nothing seems to eat, even the birds don’t touch them. I pick them up and put them in a salt box that is lidded and with elastic around it, so no chance of hogs getting them. They have also stripped most of my plants around the area. I am not going to use slug pellets and agree they should have been banned due to other wildlife. I’ve left the smaller slugs alone as I’ve read the hogs eat them. I did buy some copper tape a few months ago with the idea of sticking it to the new feeding station. It has a peel off sticky back on it. I have hesitated to use it around the door of the present station, as it seems rather sharp at the pointed edges. It’s straight on one side and like saw teeth on the other. I’m wondering, as you have used it, when you peel off the backing, is it not sharp? Also, do you put the pointed bit on the downside. I had visions of poor hogs cutting themselves on them. Have you bought straight copper tape? (I also wonder why it works anyway..) No, no access to sheep’s wool, (I’m allergic to it anyway) but please be assured, the hogs won’t get any salted slugs! Best wishes.
Hi Annker
I think you must have missed the bit which said: ‘… big ones, which actually perform an important role in the garden, breaking down fallen vegetation, etc….’ It is apparently the smaller ones which eat the live plants. But if you have a problem with slugs eating plants, the best thing to do is try to get plants which slugs aren’t so keen on, or put some sort of slug deterrant around individual plants.
Re. the copper tape. The type I have seen had straight edges, but if it sticks out, because it is quite thin, it is a bit sharp. The idea is to stick it to something so that the edges do not stick out and it is flattened so that there are no sharp bits sticking out. But you would want to flatten it to prevent water getting behind it as well. I believe it works by giving the slugs a slight electric shock which deters them.
I know how you feel Annker, those huge slugs (which I’ve nicknamed banana slugs) are so gross and seem to invade my feeding station every night too.
I just throw them out into the back of the flowerbeds every morning, but if you really can’t stand them you can put them into a compost heap (where they will probably stay and munch away) or out with the compost/garden bin collection. I have heard that slugs eventually learn to arch their bodies over copper bands anyway!
Pugwash – if you have the room it may be worth adding a second feeding station as others have suggested to avoid future Hedgie conflicts!
Yes, you might need thicker copper tape for some larger slugs. Some useful information on this site I came across: https://www.slughelp.com/copper-snails-slugs/
Those big slugs are probably ideal for the compost heap, to break down all the garden waste.
Hi Nic, & sam1404, thanks for the info on slug control Nic, I’ve just read some of it, not all tonight. Well, I seem to have bought the wrong type of copper tape as it’s going to be too thin! I like the look of the copper mesh one. As from the info, I have no Hosta left at all and it was in a tub. I did start slinging the huge monsters out as suggested by sam1404, but then though I’m just sending them to another plant. Scrolling through Amazon, where the info took me, I also saw the beer trap ones. I did buy some green plastic ones years ago and never used them. I dread to think they may attract hogs with the smell and we would have drunken hogs wobbling about the garden! These grotesque massive slugs are awful and I’ve just read from that link that you can also get salmonella from them as well! I am quite torn now. I hate the things and have put about 10 in the salt box, which as I said is put well out of the hogs way and has a lid on the box. I feel awful when I do it as well. The next minute I’m running round picking up snails to save them! The electric fence idea I saw at a flower show once, but I now wonder if that effects wild life. Needs some thought, but thanks very much, best wishes.
I have never tried it but I saw this tip on gardeners world to help protect hostas and other prized plants from slugs. Not sure if the smell would put off hedgies though?
Hi, many thanks to you all for the info. I’m going to stop using the salt box, it’s as grotesque as the slugs themselves. It wouldn’t be so bad if they stuck to the job they were intended for, instead of heading for the feeding box on a rout march every night. My herbs have not been touched, in fact, the little hogs seem to like to bury themselves in the marjoram for some reason. Think they like the smell! So, next spring I’ll be armed with copper tape and garlic water! The garlic won’t effect the hogs as the Hosta is in a large tub. We all have garden recycling bins, but don’t use them anymore, due to council asking for extra charges for using them! If we don’t want to pay extra funds, we can put garden waste in the black household waste bin… (madness) Best wishes.
Hi Annker
Glad to hear you’ve given up on the salt box – it does sound rather ghastly – for the slugs as well. Do you have a pond in your garden? Maybe what you need is some frogs. I have ponds made from tubs, one sunk in to the ground. You have to build up a ‘beach’ on one side to enable everything to get safely out, but frogs moved in fairly quickly. But generally making your garden better for beetles, etc. might help as well – for the hogs too!
That sounds quite ridiculous your council allowing you to put garden waste in with normal household waste. Sounds like positively discouraging recycling, if you have to pay for it otherwise. We also have to pay for our garden waste but aren’t supposed to put it in normal waste if we don’t. We’re supposed to either compost it ourselves or take it to the recycling centre. I gave in and just pay for it.
I’m not sure slugs are too keen on herbs, which might be why they stay away from them. But apparently beer traps just attract more of them, so I would avoid those.
Hi Nic, yes, given up on salt box! My conscious told me it was awful. I think I will resort to putting them at the wild area at the bottom of the garden from now on, if the eat rotting foliage they can do it down there.
There is a compost bin down there as well, to be honest it looks like it may have had hogs in there. It was my mums and been there for years but never seemed to work.
All councils are cash strapped these days and ours is pretty hot on recycling and fining people who dump rubbish, but, my husband worked for them over 40 yrs and is miffed that after paying council tax they want extra money to empty a green bin! We tend to put some in the waste bin if there’s room, which generally there is as there’s only two of us and it’s emptied every two weeks. If we have a lot we take it to the tip in the car where it is sectioned into green waste. I would rather do that than mess with a compost bin which never seemed to work, at least it gets composted from the tip. I guess you have as many bins as we have, it’s like bin ally!
Our hogs are still acting strange here. Going in the feeding station and not eating much at all. The little one has a little of the hog food, but it hardly needs topping up. The food has not changed, but from eating everything in sight to eating nothing is strange, especially when they are still visiting the feeding station. It feels very cold here, but the leaves are only just starting to fall.
We don’t have a pond, much as I’d like one, I settled for a gravel tray, not the very shallow one, I had to put a step in it so a hog could get out onto kerb edging stones on two sides of the tray. I haven’t seen frogs or toads in years. Years ago we had a house with a cellar and every spring a frog appeared in the kitchen. I would open the back door to let it out. The next year it would appear again, so assumed it came up from the cellar. Thanks again, value your input, best wishes.Hi everybody.
This was the only entry I could see for feeding station, so I hope my potentially ‘daft’ question will get an answer or two.
My (well supported) feeding station consists of a transparent plastic storage box with just one entry hole (5″ square) and a brick on top to discourage other animals from trying to tip it over or move it to get at the food.
I’ve noticed that recently the ceramic bowl I use for the food has moved around a lot as if the hogs are trying to reach morsels at the far end of it. I did, at first, have this bowl and the water bowl side by side at the far wall, but the food at the far end of the bowl wasn’t getting touched, so I put the water bowl in a corner on the wall nearest the entrance and the food bowl in the middle.
I wonder if the half-inch lip on the bowl is a bit too much? Would it be better to just scatter the food on the ground? Also, I imagine the bowls would be quite heavy for a hog to move, but nevertheless they do!
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