Hedgehogs gone awol

[Snake9987]

I have had hogs visiting reliably for a year and over the last 2 weeks they’ve disappeared since some fox cubs have arrived on the scene. Would the foxes deter the hogs or kill them?
I was really hoping for some hoglets this summer 🙁

[Nic]

Hi hollyhedge

Sorry to hear the hogs have gone missing. Apart from the reasons for missing hogs already mentioned above, they could be absent if they were having hoglets.

i.e. if the nest is a bit further away, the mother hog may not want to leave her young for too long and so forage nearer to where her nest is. When I was studying the hogs round here for a few years, I found that that the females (who normally turned up regularly every night at other times) used to go missing for, maybe, a couple of weeks. But would then return and carry on visiting every night again as they had done previously. I didn’t know for sure they were involved with hoglets, but thought that was feasible. But whatever the reason was, those roughly 2 week absences used to happen.

I would keep leaving the food and especially water (all day every day) for them as a hog could turn up again any time.

Good luck. Fingers crossed the hogs return and maybe some hoglets later on.

[Nic]

Hi Snake9987

Sadly, some foxes do kill hogs. Some people will say they eat happily side by side, but foxes are predators and cannot be trusted. It seems that some foxes become specialists in killing hogs – apparently they wait until the hogs unroll and then pounce. Obviously if the hog has become accustomed to eating side by side with a fox it will be more likely to be already unrolled.

There is also the problem of foxes damaging legs of hogs if the hogs don’t roll up fast enough. I have heard reports of young foxes playing with hogs and damaging their legs. There is a sad post in the Hedgehog Tales section where a poor hog had to be euthanased after having both back legs damaged by a fox.

I haven’t heard that foxes actually deter the hogs as much as, say, badgers do, but it’s possible. Are the fox cubs being attracted by food. If so, maybe if you stop feeding for a while, or make sure that they cannot access any food, they may not think it worthwhile visiting your garden. I have been lucky that I haven’t had foxes here and don’t envy you the problem. But, if the hogs reappear, at the very least I would try to make sure that wherever the hogs were fed are fox proof. They are more likely to be off their guard when actually eating.

Sorry not to have anything more positive to say. Good luck.

[Author]

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