Hedgehogs

Today at work a client brought in 4 baby hedgehogs she had been feeding in her garden. See the picture of them in my ´Work Pictures´ album, they are very cute! She had been feeding them for several days and they had been happily going back and forth from underneath the neighbour´s hedge but over the past 24 hours they had stayed in her garden and she had become concerned as they seemed much less lively than normal. When they were brought in they were quite thin and weak. They had ticks on them, which we removed, and one had a large amount of fly eggs around his face. He was very lucky as they would have quickly turned into maggots and eaten him alive had we not taken them off.

This lady was right to bring the hedgehogs in, they definitely needed some veterinary attention, but if you find any in your garden, by all means feed them, but try not to touch them. Most baby hedgehogs will have a mother watching over them but she may abandon them if they smell of humans.

We see quite a few hedgehogs in our clinic, one, Mr Prickle, was a baby when he came to us last September, he lived in the practice all winter as he was too small to survive hibernation. He now lives in a clients garden and has even found himself a girlfriend! I also removed the broken leg of from hedgehog last year. She went to live at our local stables and hasn´t looked back!

The best food to leave down for hedgehogs is either meaty cat or dog food, but avoid the fishy flavours. They also enjoy cat biscuits and there are now a couple of kinds of proper hedgehog food, ´Spikes Dinner´ and ´In The Ark Hedgehog Food´, which are available from some garden centres. It is very important that hedgehogs are NEVER fed milk and bread. This will give them diarrhoea which can be fatal, especially in young hedgehogs.

If you find a sick or injured hedgehog in your garden, the first port of call should be the vets. They should be able to help you. There are also several wildlife hospitals scattered around the country who will take in poorly hedgehogs.