Introducing the Hogs

Welcome to my Hog Blog. A chance for me to tell whosoever is out there reading it all about the antics of my hedgehog charges. In case anyone is wondering why I have hedgehogs I’ll give you a little background info. I’m a hedgehog carer for The Hedgehog Helpline, something I’ve been doing officially since May 2007. In the last 10 months I’ve had over 100 hedgehogs brought to me for treatment. 75-80% of these have been successfully re-released back into the wild. There are casualties, unfortunately, and despite my best efforts there are those I simply can’t save no matter what I do. I always feel terrible when one of the hedgehogs I’m treating dies but I can’t even begin to explain how wonderful it feels to be able to release a newly fit and healthy hedgehog back into the wild. Especially if, as is regularly the case, the chances of them surviving when they were first brought to me weren’t all that good.

 Talking of releasing hedgehogs I’m just getting ready to release another few now. Over Winter I had 12 hedgehogs in my care. All of whom were far too small to make it through the Winter and hibernation period. To stand any chance of survival hogs must be at least 600gms, any smaller and they will die whilst hibernating or won’t be able to hibernate and then will probably starve to death due to the lack of food available. The 6 largest hedgehogs out of my Winter 12 have been released now and are all doing really well. How do I know this?? Several were released into my garden to disperse naturally and the others I passed along for release into other peoples gardens which are ideal for hogs. The hogs I passed along to others are all doing well and feeding well I have been informed by email. Those hogs released into my garden, well, they come out each night and pig themselves silly on the food I put out for them. They wander up and have a nose through my patio windows. One even likes to christen my backstep on a nightly basis. And 2 have already found each other and “paired up”. Which is great news for my local hedgehog population and, hopefully, means I’ll have the privilage of seeing tiny hoglets (the official name for baby hedgehogs) foraging in my garden with their mother in the not too distant future. I’ll keep you posted on that one…..

As for the remaining 6 they’ll be leaving me shortly. They are all a good size already but are not quite as large as I’d like them to be yet. A couple more weeks of feeding up, hopefully the weather will continue improving, and they’ll be good to go. Then what will I have to do each evening?? No hogs to clean out, feed, vaccinate and treat??? No worries. I’ll be out in my garden each night keeping an eye on those I’ve released, taking photos to add to my blog and setting up my “Hog Cam”……