With days shortening and temperatures dropping, hedgehogs are busy fattening up for winter, and BBC Gardeners' World has shared advice on how gardeners can help them. The magazine recommends leaving out food and water, or providing a safe place for the mammals to hibernate.
What to feed hedgehogs
The advice encourages gardeners to put out chicken-flavored cat or dog food, or specially made high-calorie, vitamin-enriched crunchy biscuits formulated for hedgehogs. A regular portion of pet food should be left out overnight and continued until the food stops being eaten later in the season, indicating the local hedgehogs have gone into hibernation. A shallow dish of water should also be provided alongside the food.
Helping hedgehogs in need
Later in the year, when it is cold and most animals have hibernated, gardeners are advised to watch for lost hedgehogs that could be seriously ill or too underweight to survive the winter, and to contact a local hedgehog rescue. For those with space, building a hedgehog house offers a more lasting way to protect the animals.
Building a hedgehog shelter
A predator-safe hedgehog house can be built using untreated wood, a plastic storage box, or stacked bricks. An internal baffle or tunnel keeps cats and dogs out and blocks cold drafts. For a full structure, untreated FSC plywood at least 1.5–2 cm thick or scrap pallet wood, screws or nails, and metal hinges for a lift-off or hinged roof are needed. The roof can be weatherproofed with dry leaves, straw, or meadow hay, along with a plastic sheet or bag.
An easier "Lego-style" shelter can be made in under 10 minutes using spare bricks and a paving slab. On flat, sheltered ground, arrange roughly 20 to 30 loose house bricks in an "e"-shaped layout to create a nesting chamber and entrance hallway. Stack the bricks 2 or 3 layers high, add dry leaves for bedding, and place a heavy paving slab or large piece of slate on top as a roof. Alternatively, an upside-down plastic storage container or crate can be turned into a waterproof shelter by cutting a 13 cm x 13 cm entrance hole, lining the cut edge with heavy duct tape or electrical tape, and punching small air holes near the top rim for ventilation.
