Habitat

Hedgehogs like to live in woodland when there is plenty of cover , scrub and in our gardens.

Distribution in the uk

Can be found all over the uk.

  Months seen

All year round but is less active in the winter.

Food eaten

Insects and worms some dog and cat food.

Habits

 Gardeners like to have hedgehogs about the garden to help keep the slug and snail population down. However, the main food source for the hedgehog is beetles and caterpillars. They do sometimes kill small mammals, especially if other food sources are scarce and can attack the chicks of ground nesting birds.

 Hedgehogs hibernate to conserve their energy since the cold months of the year mean that food becomes scarce. The hedgehog simply tries to bypass that time of year completely. It does mean, however, that they need to have stored up enough body fats to take then through the winter.Hedgehogs can swim but sometimes lose there life due to no escape route from garden ponds to help hedgehogs in your garden try leaving a ramp for them or building your pond with shallow edges for easy escape then the hedgehogs will be having an accessable water source.

Tracking

Hedgehogs normally leave lots of signs of there presence in our gardens one sign is black droppings are not usually noticedand footprints can be found in damp mud near water sorces.When feeding hedgehog don't addmilk although it will enjoy it, the swelling of bread in the stomach and the fact that cows milk gives hedgehogs diarrhoea, means that it is not the best thing to give a hungry hedgehog. The best thing to put out for your garden hedgehog is cat or dog food. Perhaps also mix in some of the cat / dog biscuits to help the hedgehog's teeth. I've found that cat food based around beef is usually accepted or they are quite fond of peanut butter on a slice of bread as this fattens them up for there winter hibination when they need body fat to stay alive.

Courtship

 Hedgehogs are solitary creatures and meet up in the spring to mate on our lawns they get very noisy with there mating calls from squeals to grunts and circle each other during this process.Hedgehogs usually have two litters from may to august the first litter has the best chance of survival  and have about 5 to 8 young they open there eyes at two weeks can roll up into a ball at 11 days and stop feeding on there mothers milk at 6 weeks.

 Check out our Hedgehog pages Below :

 PhPhotographs taken by Mike Mottram ,Richard Ford, Chris Evans