So I’ve been a hedgehog carer for a few years now and I’ve treated around 250 hogs in that time and released a good number of those….

Now I seem to be stepping up a gear. I’ve been asked to start doing talks and presentations on hedgehogs for schools, youth groups etc and I’ve already got 3 booked in for the next few weeks and probably more for around the Christmas period. I’ve also been given a BHPS (British Hedgehog Preservation Society) mobile phone. It all seems that much more important and official all of a sudden but I’m more than happy with that. The more I can do for my favourite British mammal the better.

Update on the current hoggy patients:

The 3 (not so small) hoglets are all doing really well. They weigh 476gm, 427gm and 398gm and they really do eat like hogs everyday. Their food bowl is practically licked clean everytime I go in to feed them and as soon as the fresh food is put out for them they come running! I think I might need to increase the size of their food bowl as, at the moment, the 3 of them share a double food bowl but they might now need a small food bowl each as well as a water bowl each. With all these bowls I think they’re going to need a bigger pen….

The hogs in the outdoor pens are also doing well. The blind hedgehog is gather nesting materials into a corner which I think she plans on hibernating in. She should do very well as she’s a good size and, other than her blindness, is very fit and healthy. The male in the outdoor pen is also doing well and a good size. I’m currently looking for a suitable release site for him and then he’ll be off. It’s all good 

Had to give you an update because I’m so very pleased with the hoglets (not so small now) progress.

As you may remember I had 1 hoglet in a while ago who was failing to put on any weight after his brother died and even after being on antibiotics I wondered if he’d survive. I kept up with careful feedings and daily weighings but he was only ever around the 200gm mark and then he started to lose the weight again. I really thought he wasn’t going to make it…..

Then a few weeks back I had in a hog family (aka the Escapees), a mother hog and her 2 young hoglets. The family did really well, escaped many times and made my evenings in the shed very fun. But, very soon the mother hog was ready to be released as the mother hedgehogs generally leave their hoglets to go off on their own at around 6-8 wks of age. The mother was successfully released but the hoglets had to stay with me seeing as there was no way they would put on enough weight quickly enough to survive the winter. So then I had these 2 hoglets in 1 pen and the struggling hoglet in a pen on his own. I decided to try putting them all in together as hoglets are used to having company as it’s quite rare for a mother hog to only have 1.

When introducing hoglets to each other you never can tell how it will go. Sometimes it’s great and they accept each other straight away, snuggling up together etc….Other times things do not go well at all, they fight or hiss and puff and each other and they end up having to be separated again….how would things turn out with these 3 hoglets???

FANTASTICALLY WELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They all got along really brilliantly from the word go and last night when I weighed them they were all around 400gms!!! So they have all gained around 200gms since I put them in together! Great!!!!

They’ve still got another few hundred grams to put on yet but they look great, nice shiny, healthy looking prickles, healthy poops etc. I am one very happy lady!!

The blind hog in the outdoor pen is also doing really well. She’s made herself a nice nest in some leaves and has a very healthy appetite. She is always out in the evenings when I go to feed the hogs in the shed and waits for me to put her food in, scurrying over to snaffle her favourite bits of food first!

Two’s company, Three’s a crowd isn’t that the old saying? Well it would appear not to apply to hoglets…

I’m so happy to say that I haven’t had any further escapees although I have had 2 rejectees (if that’s a word). Mother hog decided it was time for the hoglets to be out on their own, which is about right as they are around 8 weeks old now and feeding well for themselves, and had made herself a nest elsewhere in the pen, leaving them on their own. They were more than happy with this and were having a great time getting into everything, upending the food bowl, paddling in the water bowl, all the usual hoglet mischief.

As mother hog was 900gms she has now gone into an outdoor pen and if all is well she can be released very soon as she is easily big enough and healthy enough to survive the winter.

The 2 hoglets however are still nowhere near heavy enough, they are only just 250gms and have a long way to go yet.

So…I had 2 hoglets at around 250gms in one pen, and 1 hoglet (the surviving brother) at around 280gms in another. The 1 hoglet has struggled to put on weight since his brother died and I have always found hoglets fair better when they have company so I wondered if I could try putting them all in together?? It was worth a go

I thoroughly cleaned the pens and wiped all the hoglets down so they would smell the same then put them all in together with a nice bowl of food and water. First off they all scurried under the bedding and refused to come out so I decided to check back in an hour…

One hour later and all the food was gone, the pen was an absolute bomb site, and all 3 hoglets were happily snuggled up together!! That was yesterday…

Today all 3 are still happy together but they’ve all put on between 10 and 15gms in weight! Fantastic!!

Oh…and the pen is still a bomb site….no matter how many times a day I clean it…

They say once is an accident, 2nd time is a coincidence and 3rd time is habit don’t they? Well for the THIRD time last night I was in the shed hunting down the little hog family because for the 3rd time I had forgotton to weigh down the pen lid and they had escaped!

The 2nd time wasn’t too bad. They went straight to the same place they nested in the 1st time they escaped. The 3rd time, however, was not so easy….

I was on my way down to the hedgehog shed when I heard scurrying on lino and I knew instantly what that was…hoglets running around on the floor of the shed!!! After the 2nd escape only 2 nights ago had I forgotton to put the weight on the pen lid again?!?!?!?!?!?! Surely not!!!….but surely so….The hog family pen was open, there was food everywhere, some one had been snuffling through all my tins of cat/dog food and rolled them all over the floor, there were small (and not so small!!) hog poos in various locations, shredded paper was everywhere!!!

Many words passed through my mind…I shall not repeat any of them here…..*?!*?!*!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, here we go again….here hedgehog hedgehog hedgehog….here hoggy hoggy hoggy…and then….

I spot a little nose sticking ut from behind the bin!!! Ahahahaha!!! One of the hoglets…he thinks he can out smart me??? Nope!! I am too quick for him and manage to get him safely back in his pen with very little effort other than a few prickles to the hand…now where are the other 2? mummy hog and the other hoglet are nowhere to be seen….

I’m on all fours on the shed floor, trying to avoid kneeling in the hog poop. Peering behind the bin I realise the rest of the hog family aren’t there…hmmm….I go to the bag of towels…..There’s a large prickly lump; in there…It’s mummy hog!!!! Back in the pen she goes….2 down, 1 to go…..

Here little hoglet……where are you??…..after 20mins of searching I concede defeat and call in back up…my sister joins me in the shed and between us we moved everything carefully out of the shed, checking it all as we did so to ensure the hoglet was not hiding in any of it…As the last thing was removed from the shed I peered around…no hog!!! Where was it hiding?!?!?!?!?!?!…

30mins later…..everything back in the shed again…my sister gives up and goes back inside….it is 10.30pm…I am hot, tired and thirsty….I want to go to bed but I have a missing hoglet and I’ve still got to feed all of the hogs yet….

I sort all the hogs in the pens out with food and water….Once this is done I turn out the light and stand in the dark, hoping the little hoglet will either come out from its hiding place or at least make a sound to give himself away….

10 minutes pass…I want my bed….if any of the neighbours have been watching they will have surely labelled me a crazy person by now…..I’m going to give it 5 more mins then I’ll give up….

Wait!!! I hear something!! In the corner, behind the bin, the same place the other hoglet had been!! Surely not?!?!

There he was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I quickly got him back in his pen.

What an evening!!!! And, please, no-one ask where he had been hiding all that time because I still have no idea!! :o)

I can’t stop humming the themem tune to the movie The Great Escape this morning….with good reason.

Last night as I was heading down to the hedgehog shed to feed the hogs I could hear some very bizarre noises coming from the end of the garden. It sounded like an animal inside a carrier bag. Straight away I thought perhaps a bag had blown into the garden and one of the resident garden hogs had found it so I went back to the house to get a torch so I could check there wasn’t an animal stuck in the bag.

Having got the torch I proceeded to check around the garden for the location of the bag and/or animal. Firstly I checked the hogs in the outdoor pen but they were both fine, foraging around for their food and quickly scurrying away when they spotted me. So the source of the noise wasn’t them….

I then made my way around the back of the shed towards the compost heap where several hogs nest on a nightly basis….Nothing out of the ordinary there, no hogs or other animals and no carrier bags….but I could still hear the rustling sound and I was certain it was an animal in a plastic bag of some kind…hmmmm

Then it dawned on me. It was coming from INSIDE the shed! That meant one of 2 possibilities. Either there was an animal intruder in the shed or one of the hedgehog inhabitants from inside the shed had escaped!

I opened the door of the shed carefully and shone the torch around. I couldn’t see anything in the beam of the torchlight but the rustling noise was coming from the corner of the shed where I store the shredded paper and old towels I use for hog bedding. I turned on the light inside the shed but it wasn’t strong enough to light that particular corner so I pointed the torch into the corner and spotted 3 little noses sticking out from the bag of towels!

I quickly turned around and checked the hedgehog pens…the pen containing the mother hedgehog and her 2 hoglets was hanging open having been pushed up and dislodged from the inside! And it seemed mother hedgehog had decided to firstly take her hoglets on a foraging mission around the shed and then make a nice comfy new nest in my clean, though not so clean now, towels!

Now extracting 3 hedgehogs from a bag of towels is nowhere near as easy as you might think especially as it was difficult to keep the torch pointed into the bag, hold the bag open and lift the hogs out! Plus it was rather like taking part in a tombola where the prizes ran away from you and prickled your hand when you grasped them!

Eventually I had the little hog family back safe in their pen, gave them their food, covered the pen over and made sure I put something weighty on the lid to hold it down! Then, as I turned to the other pens I spotted, not another escapee thank goodness, but one of the hogs from the other pens had been watching my antics and I swear I could see a little hoggy grin!!

Anyway, after all that story, an update on the hogs. All are doing really well. The blind female hedgehog is doing really well, enjoying her outdoor pen and getting used to coming out at night again instead of in the day. I have a male hog in another outdoor pen getting ready for release.

And the mother and baby hoglets, as you’ve probably already guessed, are doing brilliantly. I’m going to move them to an outdoor pen soon so the mother can teach the hoglets to forage and nest outdoors although the hoglets will need to stay for a while yet as they are only just over 200gms and they need to be at least 600gms to be able to survive the winter.

The surviving hoglet I had in quite a while back, whose brother sadly died from a bacterial infection after having sustained an horrific injury from a strimmer, is still coming along albeit slowly as the bacterial infection affected him too and seems to be quite difficult to clear. However he is eating well and gaining weight slowly so fingers crossed all should be well.

Unfortunately, as always, there are 2 not so happy tales to tell. I had 2 hoglets brought to me last night, from 2 different places. 1 of the hoglets was approximately 4 weeks old, the other I think was around 10 weeks old. Both were in a bad state. Both had what looked like strimmer injuries(!!!!!) and were infested with maggots. I did my very best for both hogs, giving them both suitable painkillers and antibiotics and fluids to try and improve their conditions. I managed to clean their wounds and remove the maggots and put them on heat pads but sadly an hour later both had died.

So last night was an evening of amusement from the hog family in the shed and then sadness for the 2 poor injured hogs I wasn’t able to save.