Help Our Hedgehogs! Hedgehogs are becoming an endangered species in Britain, but we have a healthy population in the gardens of Melbourn and Meldreth. Shepreth hedgehog hospital has been releasing some of their rehabilitated hogs in our villages’ approved safe, wildlife friendly gardens, but as hedgehogs roam over a wide area, we need everybody to be looking out for our prickly friends. The easiest thing you can do to help them is to make sure you have one or two CD sized (10cm, 4 inch) gaps in your fence so the creatures can forage in your garden.
Hoglet at Four Weeks Old
Hedgehogs spend the day sleeping in undergrowth, dense bushes, and under decking and sheds, and they will also use these nests for rearing their young and for hibernation. Please can you therefore be especially careful when tidying your gardens and having bonfires, and just check for hedgehogs before gardening with sharp tools or strimmers. Slug pellets are really bad for the whole food chain, and rat Hedgehog at Night poison should be avoided too. Hedgehogs and birds can easily become entangled in garden netting and rubbish, and can fall into uncovered manholes. One of our hospital patients was called ‘Hydrangea’ and another called ‘Nettie’ for those reasons! Hedgehogs can swim, but will drown if they can’t climb out of a pond; make sure you provide a ramp inside the edge of your pond, or have a slope at one end. If you do disturb or have to move a hedgehog, just put it into an open box or pet carrier filled with scrunched up newspaper, hay, straw or dead leaves in a quiet corner of your garden where it can sleep until night time, then check the next day that Feeding Station & Water Dish it has gone. If a hedgehog is very sick or 34
