[Closed] Hogwatch - wildlife cams and hedgehog boxes

If they’re anything like one hoglet that’s in my garden, it’s wandering around in full daylight, at midday yesterday! It’s scoffing the bits of suet pellets and calciworms* that the birds drop, I’m wondering if it’s because the big ones hog the feeding stations I made, and it doesn’t get a look-in. My g/f was out back today and it was snuffling around,so she but some calciworms down in front of it and it was happily munching away on them!
*Like mealworms, but a different type of insect, they’re very high in calcium, hence the name, and fine for ‘hogs to eat.
I put loads of dry fallen leaves from my acer and silver Birch under my spruce and Leylandii hedge, and it seems to have adopted that as a sleeping place, it’s very well sheltered and out of the wind and rain. One big one was using an upturned flower planter that I cut a hole in, but it later died, and none of the others seem interested. I’d like some shallow wooden boxes I can cut a hole in and put some 5” water pipe into, but I can’t find any at the moment.

Ours have already gone into hibernation I think, it's getting pretty late in the year... Also, they were well fed and fat. I miss them! There was a spell in late summer where I'd see a couple most nights.

I got one of these, pretty much the cheapest wildlife camera on amazon.

Cheapy camera

It's... alright. Temperamental about SD cards and a fair amount of the videos don't work.But it's been good fun. Definitely not what you'd want to get if you want really quality footage or photos but enough to give you a wee view of their lives.

[img] [/img]

[url= http://i.imgur.com/ISUL6uy.jp g" target="_blank">http://i.imgur.com/ISUL6uy.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

(this one's not from the wildlife cam, I got this just by sneaking up on them while they were trying to get it on)

[url= http://i.imgur.com/PNial45.jp g" target="_blank">http://i.imgur.com/PNial45.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

CountZero
Full Member
If they’re anything like one hoglet that’s in my garden, it’s wandering around in full daylight, at midday yesterday! It’s scoffing the bits of suet pellets and calciworms* that the birds drop, I’m wondering if it’s because the big ones hog the feeding stations I made, and it doesn’t get a look-in. My g/f was out back today and it was snuffling around,so she but some calciworms down in front of it and it was happily munching away on them!

I'd maybe scoop that one up and take her to a wildlife hospital for a check up 🤔
If she's out and about in daylight (particularly at this time of year) she might have a gut full of intestinal worms and be struggling to put enough weight on to survive hibernation.

@footflaps is our resident hog botherer

I agree with scruffywelder that if Hogs are out through the day especially little young ones then its a sign that they can't hibernate and need to be taken to a rescue center for a check up and possible overwintering somewhere.

was debating this recently and ended up ordering a couple of wildlife cameras from Green Feathers as they had a bit of a BF sale. They're only 1080P and relatively expensive, but they look pretty compact and have a wide-angle lens making them ideal for bird boxes etc. I'm going to use one in our chicken coop and probably one in a bat box, ultimately want to get more though for bird box/feeding table and yes - hedgehog house!

(They also sell hedgehog houses/feeding stations so you can get an all in one kit)

I've gone for POE cameras, was tempted by just a standard 1080P Reolink camera which would've been about half the price, hopefully this camera will be worth the extra though - they seem really well regarded online.

We have half a dozen hog houses of different designs, latest ones came from: https://www.riversidewoodcraft.co.uk/hedgehog-houses/

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50672458787_ccc4b3149e.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50672458787_ccc4b3149e.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2kcKAAx ]HH houses[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

Remember to pack them with straw if you want occupants, they like being packed in quite tightly. I change the straw every few weeks as they shit all over their bedding, so it becomes a stinking rotting mess after a month or so, or at least the bottom inch does.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50671656868_6b3f99af14.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50671656868_6b3f99af14.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2kcFudm ]HH house[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

I have one underweight autumn juvenile in a rabbit hutch in the workshop over wintering indoors to beef him up. We did take in two, but the smaller one didn't make it and died (90% fatality rate for autumn juveniles apparently).

These were the pair:

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50671656793_f8052ebc19.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50671656793_f8052ebc19.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2kcFuc4 ]Pair of autumn juveniles[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

and the surviving one now lives here:

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50672450387_6292af56d2.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50672450387_6292af56d2.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2kcKy6H ]HH house[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50594090971_b51f0c2fa4.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50594090971_b51f0c2fa4.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2k5PWzi ]Autumn Juvenile HH Box[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50594221322_e040ff4ea8.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50594221322_e040ff4ea8.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2k5QBjJ ]Autumn Juvenile HH Box[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

We've still got at least two 500g ish autumn juveniles out and about in the garden, which we feed every night with kibble.

I also dropped off a feeding station at my parents house, as they have seen HHs. They were quite excited as the food was going every night, however not to HHs!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/50605579646/in/photostream

https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/50605583866/in/photostream/

Our wildlife camera is an earlier model of: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crenova-included-Waterproof-Activated-Observation/dp/B016O208AY

@footflaps that is cool! You're obviously very keen on 'hogs! Is there any point me getting a hedgehog house now... will anyone use it or are they all hibernating already? (not spotted any in our garden yet)

Is there any point me getting a hedgehog house now… will anyone use it or are they all hibernating already? (not spotted any in our garden yet)

I saw three out in the garden last night, so no they're not all hibernating.

Apparently they're all different, some go to sleep in Oct and won't wake till March; others don't bother.

NB We're in the SE so relatively mild down here.....

You’re obviously very keen on ‘hogs!

Yes, becoming a bit of an obsession, plus once all the neighbours know you're into them I get brought estranged juveniles to try and save.

They're really cute, but sadly most of the ones under 200g die on you. They seem absolutely fine for a few days then suddenly go downhil. My local wildlife centre assures me this is pretty normal, they save only 5-10% of the tiny ones.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50081644823_736efdfb1e.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50081644823_736efdfb1e.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2jixwbT ]Baby HH[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

@footflaps yeah I'm in the SE too, it's only in the last few days I'd say it's got slightly nippy, still really mild considering it's almost Chrimbo!
So would you say it'd be worth putting out a hog house at any time really, and someone might use it? And is it best to have separate house & feeder, or can you combine them (on the link you posted with the hog houses, I saw they had a "feeder attachment" for the houses which was just a cover, which confused me as I thought you were supposed to hide the food away to stop other animals taking it? We have cats so they'd definitely eat it 🤣)

So would you say it’d be worth putting out a hog house at any time really, and someone might use it? And is it best to have separate house & feeder, or can you combine them (on the link you posted with the hog houses, I saw they had a “feeder attachment” for the houses which was just a cover, which confused me as I thought you were supposed to hide the food away to stop other animals taking it? We have cats so they’d definitely eat it 🤣)

Yes, keep the foot and houses separate.

You need to stuff the house with straw to get an occupant, they won't use an empty house.

If you have cats / foxes then put a narrow tunnel on the feeder to keep out larger animals. I use plastic tubs with a hole cut in one side and then add a wooden tunnel. Bricks on top as Foxes will attack the box quite enthusiasticly and will drag / move it etc.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49069029947_8039e6145f.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49069029947_8039e6145f.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2hL4B4H ]HH Feed Station[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

HHs are nomadic, so you get an occupant for a few nights then they wander off somewhere else, then someone else uses it. Hibernations are also in stages, they often change location 2 or 3 times, so keep food and houses prepped all through winter as someone will wake up and need a meal in mid January when they change location.

I have a Flickr folder of my early attempts at attracting HHs, need to update it - it has a lot of early iterations of feeders which foxes breached, till I came up with my final design...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/albums/72157692167980190/with/49069029947/

@footflaps good info thanks! Do you keep the food & house next to/near each other, or in different places in the garden?

@footflaps good info thanks! Do you keep the food & house next to/near each other, or in different places in the garden?

They're all fairly close to holes I've cut in fences on both sides, creating a HH highway which is very well used.

If you keep the feed station in the same place, you find HHs making a beeline directly for it as they all remember where it is. I've counted 60 visits in one night to one of our feeding stations! NB That's probably 10 HHs visiting 6 times each rather than 60 different HHs. They all look pretty much the same bar size on an infra red camera.

I’d maybe scoop that one up and take her to a wildlife hospital for a check up 🤔
If she’s out and about in daylight (particularly at this time of year) she might have a gut full of intestinal worms and be struggling to put enough weight on to survive hibernation.

Update on this, turned out we had two hoglets in the garden, and both were out last Saturday, and one of them wasn’t very well at all, it was tottering around, could barely stay upright. The other one seemed ok, this is it, munching on some calciworms:

This is its sibling, pretty sure they’re from the same litter:

We found a box, lined it with some towels, and brought them indoors, while I made some calls. Phoned the Hedgehog Protection League, who gave me a number for Wiltshire Wildlife Hospital. I drove them over to Devizes and met someone who reckoned they were rather underweight, so I’m waiting to hear back about how they’re doing. When I checked them before leaving the house, they were both asleep with one curled up with it’s head on the other one’s back, so cute!
It occurred to me that the problem may be that I’d stopped putting out wet dog food, because it was just being ignored, so just leaving out kibbles with some calciworms.
However, we hadn’t realised that there were two hoglets, and the kibbles were probably just too big and hard for them to deal with. We’ve got some dog sausage, like a sort of pâté, which might be a lot better.

What would be a good food to put out in case of midwinter snacky missions? The hedgehog food I have doesn't last long outside, they love it when it's dry but it soaks up water even just from wet air and goes manky, they won't eat it except dry.

What would be a good food to put out in case of midwinter snacky missions?

Yes. I keep putting it out all through winter, when they stop coming I leave less out, but if I find an empty bowl one morning, I put more out the next night. We still have HHs active in the garden, taking kibbles every night. No idea why they don't hibernate, one of them was enormous (about 1kg) probably a rescue one I realised, as the ones from the local HH Hospital get pretty large before they rehome them.

The hedgehog food I have doesn’t last long outside, they love it when it’s dry but it soaks up water even just from wet air and goes manky, they won’t eat it except dry.

I use Sainsbury kitten kibble and that can last a week outside without getting soggy.

We found a box, lined it with some towels, and brought them indoors, while I made some calls. Phoned the Hedgehog Protection League, who gave me a number for Wiltshire Wildlife Hospital. I drove them over to Devizes and met someone who reckoned they were rather underweight, so I’m waiting to hear back about how they’re doing. When I checked them before leaving the house, they were both asleep with one curled up with it’s head on the other one’s back, so cute!

A heated is really useful for looking after weak HHs esp if they are wobbly / not moving with intention etc. You can get a load of cheap ones for pets on Amazon. I have a few ones I use to keep them warm. Or you can use a Hot water bottle, but you have to keep topping it up and make sure it's not too hot etc.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50709834431_e47b1011e1.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50709834431_e47b1011e1.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2kg4a5c ]HH on hot water bottle[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50682996233_5358118949.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50682996233_5358118949.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2kdFB1D ]8W USB heated mat for Hedgehog[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50683831712_f39a20b104.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50683831712_f39a20b104.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2kdKTns ]8W USB heated mat for Hedgehog[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

Cheers footflaps, I'll try that and build some better feeders (I don't usually mind that cats and birds nick a load of it, as long as there's enough to go round, but that won't work in a "stick it out and maybe they'll take it" box I think)

. I'm not going to say that I'll actively kidnap a hedgehog, but I may be seeking excuses to rescue one now 🙂

I’ve just spoken to the lady at the wildlife hospital, and sadly our two hoglets didn’t make it. ☹️
One, the weakest, had died before she got home, the other overnight, which is just really sad.
Hopefully we’ll get some more, I’m going to stuff the upturned flower tubs with hay, to see if I can encourage them to nest in the garden again, and I’m trying to find some suitable boxes and some scrap 5” water pipe to make entrances to make them more comfortable and weather-proof, although being under the hedge they’re pretty well protected.
As far as food is concerned, ours seem to be very fussy, they do like the Wilco’s pockets, kibbles with creamy centres like Dreamies, but will ignore the ordinary ones if I get some by mistake, they seemed to love the dog meat in gravy, but suddenly stopped eating it, so now we’re trying B&M dog sausage, which is like a pâté, and they’re clearing the plate, so if we’re lucky enough to get some more hoglets next year hopefully that’ll suit them better.

I’ve just spoken to the lady at the wildlife hospital, and sadly our two hoglets didn’t make it.

Very common, once you see them wobbling it's pretty much game over. If you get involved with helping the tiny ones, a lot will die on you unfortunately. The chap on the hot water bottle above didn't make it, but his brother is now 620g - so one made it.

As far as food is concerned, ours seem to be very fussy, they do like the Wilco’s pockets, kibbles with creamy centres like Dreamies, but will ignore the ordinary ones if I get some by mistake, they seemed to love the dog meat in gravy, but suddenly stopped eating it, so now we’re trying B&M dog sausage, which is like a pâté, and they’re clearing the plate, so if we’re lucky enough to get some more hoglets next year hopefully that’ll suit them better.

I normally put out three foods in summer, kitten kibbles, sunflower seeds and dog pate. They can be fussy buggers. One odd thing is their tastes can change, I had one who wasn't gaining weight, so he went off to have his intestinal parasites killed and came back two weeks later and had completely changed his choice of food.

No one has been eating the dog pate recently, so I've just dropped back to kitten kibbles at the moment. I suspect the pate eater is hibernating....

Thread resurrection - Can anyone recommend me a wildlife camera for a bird feeder?

https://imgur.com/a/SfVMgzH

This was filmed on a camera we got from Amazon - great for a month and then the night vision sensor stopped working, wouldn’t even detect an adult red deer! Now replaced with a Ring camera.

We have at least 3 hedgehogs, it’s a bit of a paradise for them here here as we have no foxes and badgers on the Isle of Mull and we’re well away from any roads. It’s been very mild here this winter - they’re still eating food we leave out, with kitten kibble or Spike hedgehog food.

https://imgur.com/a/rQwCCmo

I’ve made a couple of houses and feeders from a plastic mussel float - which are the big buoys they use to farm mussels. Lots of them here, but kinda useless if you’re in the midlands!

As this thread has been resurrected, I can update as to the hedgehog houses I bought last year, and put underneath my spruce hedge, one at each end. I put meadow hay in both, along with a load of dry leaves from my Acer, and one seemed to be adopted fairly quickly, the entrance is plugged with leaves, while I left that clear. The other one doesn’t seem to have been taken on, although it might be the bigger ‘hogs already have established sleeping places, it may well be one of last year’s hoglets that’s using it.
It’s been pretty mild, and they’re still active and going after the kibbles and calciworms I put out for them.
I’ve been out to feed them several times lately and found a ‘hog either by the boxes, or in one case I caught one halfway in, and all the time I was cleaning the plates and refilling them, it was absolutely still, with one back leg slightly off the ground! So funny, obviously thinking ’if I’m really, really, really still, he won’t notice I’m here!’

https://homeandroost.co.uk/product/predator-proof-hedgehog-house/

Just put a house/feeding station in my new place, also may have poked holes in the fences between me and the neighbours 🙂 Haven't seen any sign of hedgehogs but it's a good area for them so I hope we have some. I miss my last little guys...

We built a stone hog house and covered it with small twigs and leaves. I have no idea if the local hedgehog has taken up residence.
As countzero mentioned it's been a mild winter and the hogs aren't always hibernating (bad in a way as they need to do this). Here's hoping they can get the food they need if they aren't being fed by nature loving folk.

We've not seen our hogs since around mid December - at one time over the summer we had 5 or 6 individuals visiting but that had dropped down to one stopping by for food every other night or so, and now that one's stopped too. Hopefully they're all sleeping soundly and will be back in a few weeks.

I think there was a question about cameras for bird feeders that resurrected this thread - you'd need something with decent close focus and most importantly a really fast trigger. A lot of the cheaper stuff from LtlAcorn etc can have delays of almost a second between detection and photo so all you'll see is the blur of something leaving with a peanut in its beak. I'd look at the likes of Bushnell or Browning cams but they're a bit spendier if you just want to dabble.