Hedgehog in Autumn leaves
In this article, Wildlife Matters asks what hedgehogs eat. Hedgehogs are omnivores with a diverse diet, including invertebrates like Beetles, caterpillars, earthworms, millipedes, snails, and slugs are all favourites. Still, hedgehogs are flexible when it comes to their diet.
Despite their small size, hedgehogs have a large appetite and are opportunistic scavengers. They will eat ground-nesting bird’s eggs, chicks that may have fallen from the nest, and carrion. They are also thirsty animals and require a regular, clean, fresh water supply.
While hedgehogs can move quickly and have sharp canine teeth, they are not hunters and are more likely to scavenge from carcasses.
Hedgehogs will eat any food they can easily catch or scavenge, including reptiles and snakes, but eating either species is infrequent. It is a common belief that hedgehogs are immune to snake venom, but this is false. However, in the UK, the only venomous snake, the adder, is too small to harm a healthy hedgehog.
Although hedgehog numbers are declining in the British countryside, they have recently become more frequent garden visitors.
This is beneficial for the recovery of the hedgehog population in urban areas as gardens provide a safe habitat for them to rest and nest, and often have a regular supply of food and water.
If you would like to attract hedgehogs to your garden, there are five simple things you should do according to the Amazing Grace Project:
- Can the hedgehogs get in and out of your garden?
Many gardens now have wooden fence panels that enclose your garden and provide an effective barrier to stop hedgehogs from getting in.
The solution is to cut a small hole of around 12.5cm or 5 inches in the base of your fence, ideally behind some shrubs or plants. Another option is to take a small section from or raise the gate to the garden. Removing just a single brick from the base of a brick wall is all a hedgehog needs.
2. What food is available in your garden
Hedgehogs can roam up to 2 kilometres per night in search of food, so you want to ensure that if they come to your garden, they can find food, which is the purpose of this blog.
Natural is always best! By providing a colourful and diverse range of plants and shrubs in your garden, you will be attracting a wide range of insects, vertebrates and invertebrates, like the beetles, worms and caterpillars we talked about at the start of the blog, and they are the hedgehog’s natural diet.
You aim is to help them through the late autumn and winter by providing an additional food source, but please remember if you start to feed. You must continue as the hedgehogs will be relying on you, and if you forget or worse, stop feeding in the colder months that could have fatal consequences for the hedgehogs.
3. A place to Nest and Rest
Hedgehogs like to find a safe place, undercover, to rest during the day where they are safer from predation. This could be in amongst shrubs and densely planted perennials at the base of a hedge or in a patch of grass that you will leave long and uncut throughout the spring and summer.
Hedgehogs will nest in strange places and have been found in garden structures, sheds, garages, empty buckets, compost sacks and even in old sand pits or paddling pools. Anything that is undercover and keeps Mrs Hedgehog and her hoglets out of sight of predators.
4. We all need water
Hedgehogs need a reliable source of clean, fresh water. If you have a garden pond, please ensure that you have shallow or sloping edges and a ramp that can be used to get out if a hedgehog accidentally tumbles in. They are great swimmers but can only swim for a while and will drown without an escape route.
If you don’t have a pond, a shallow dish of water that should be emptied and replaced daily is ideal. What works well is a ceramic plant pot base that is wide and shallow and can be filled with gravel that will help to keep the water from drying out in the warm weather and freezing over in the cold weather.
5. Hazards
We’ve talked about ponds, but there can be all manner of hazards for hedgehogs in your garden. I encourage you to try and see your garden from their view.
Firstly, do you have open or grated drain covers in your garden? If so, are the covers securely in place?
If you have netting on your vegetables or a football goal, please keep the netting off the ground at all times, and please don’t use any bug killer, moss or weed killers in your garden.
Remember any word ‘with cide’ means poison, and no matter what the pack claims, if it is a herbicide, insecticide or contains Glyphosate, it will kill the plants and bugs that your hedgehog depends on for its natural diet.
Hedgehog in Autumn
Don’t feed your Hedgehogs any of these.
Bread and milk are commonly known as food for hedgehogs, but milk isn’t good for them.
Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, just like most mammals, including humans. Similarly, despite being fortified with vitamins and minerals, white bread has limited nutritional value. It can cause bloating due to gluten, making the animal feel full even when their stomach isn’t.
Cheese, a dairy product, is unsuitable for hedgehogs for the same reasons as milk. Although dairy products are not poisonous, lactose can cause digestive problems that may lead to diarrhoea and subsequent loss of condition.
It would be best to refrain from feeding hedgehogs cooked or raw meat. Cooked meat will soon be covered in flies, which will lay their eggs and contain harmful bacteria. The flesh decomposes quickly in the garden, and you will almost certainly attract a range of carnivores, including rats.
These are okay as occasional treats only.
Hedgehogs will eat a wide range of fruit, but never citrus fruit, such as orange, lemon and lime. This also includes grapes and avocado. However, fallen fruits, such as apples, pears, plums, and berries, are high in sugar and calories, making them unsuitable for their regular diet.
They are best provided as a seasonal autumn treat when Hedgehogs store body fat ready for hibernation. Vegetables, especially pumpkins and squash, often left out for wildlife after Halloween, are not a feature of a hedgehogs natural diet.
Hedgehogs will eat most nuts, including peanuts, but nuts are not a good food choice. Whole peanuts can get caught in their teeth and palate, where they will rot and lead to gum infections and tooth decay. There are also recorded cases of hedgehogs being asphyxiated by peanuts that became stuck in their throats.
Mealworms are a popular treat and contain excellent proteins and amino acids that can be beneficial as part of a balanced hedgehog’s diet.
The problem is Mealworms have an abysmal calcium-to-phosphorus ratio, and unlike birds, hedgehogs do not need a high-fat source in their diets.
Anyone offering mealworms to hedgehogs will know they become very excited and will greedily eat everything provided. I can perhaps best relate this to us eating junk food that tastes great, is full of fats and calories, and as an occasional treat is acceptable if you maintain a balanced, healthy diet, but we know that too much junk food is not suitable for you. It’s the same for hedgehogs, so it’s best not to offer them mealworms in the first place.
It is often said not to feed fish to hedgehogs, mainly in relation to cat food, and whilst it’s hard to imagine fish being part of their natural diet, Fish protein is beneficial, and therefore, within a balanced diet is okay for hedgehogs.
The simplest way we know of is to mix a variety of flavoured sachets and divide them between bowls or serve over a couple of days, ensuring a good mix of all the ingredients and providing a balanced diet to the hedgehogs.
It has been proven that hedgehogs can digest fish, so there are no concerns, and fish-based food travels quickly through the hedgehog’s digestive system, which can mean a strong fish smell in their poo. If you feed fish-based food, you will see that some are attracted to the strong smell of fish and others repelled.
Hedgehogs can eat good quality dog and cat foods.
Dog food has a broader range of ingredients than cat food and provides lower protein, vitamins and minerals, making it a good option for hedgehogs.
Cat food is rich in nutrition but can contain high levels of protein and vitamins, particularly Vitamins A and Vitamin D. However, as hedgehogs are nocturnal they are very efficient at processing vitamins, so unlike humans, they don’t need to get Vitamin D from the Sun, and their bodies can’t metabolise the vitamins.
A wide range of commercial hedgehog foods is now available in our supermarkets and garden centres and online.
However, it’s important to note that some brands are repackaged cat or dog food and not specially formulated for hedgehogs. We advise reading the packaging or website to see if the product is specially formulated for hedgehogs or contains insects in the ingredient list.
If you decide to feed your garden Hedgehogs, here are some tips and advice that will help make the feeding suitable for the hedgehogs and you.
Always clean the bowls daily and, if possible, do not leave the food out all night. If you do, bring it in as soon as possible in the morning to avoid attracting other animals, such as cats and rats, to your garden.
Move the location of the food bowls around the garden regularly. It has been proven that searching for food is good for the hedgehogs and ensures they use their keen sense of smell to locate food. This best replicates the natural search for food.
Always place the food near some natural cover so your hedgehogs are not in the open and exposed to predators. An excellent way to remember this is to drop the H and think of them as “Edgehogs”.
You should never see a hedgehog in the centre of your lawn or an open area. If they are in the open and not just moving through, they are likely in trouble and may need your help.
It’s crucial to leave fresh water out daily. Use shallow bowls filled with gravel that help reduce evaporation in hot weather and keep the water fresher, whilst in cold weather, it will help prevent the water completely freezing over.
Hedgehogs instinctively know to push the gravel around with their noses to find drops of water under the gravel, even in a dried-out or frozen bowl. Those few drops of water can be lifesavers.
Feeding stations can be challenging to keep clean and may become a health hazard to hedgehogs, so it’s best not to use them.
Once you start feeding hedgehogs, they will begin to rely on the food, especially during winter when hibernating hedgehogs sometimes wake up searching for food.
With the generally warmer and wetter winters in the UK, Hedgehogs rarely hibernate throughout the winter and instead tend to hibernate through colder weather but will wake up in the warmer weather.
Waking up from torpor uses incredibly amounts of energy and the hedgehog will need to find food to restore its energy levels that also help to retain body heat. If they can’t find food it can prove fatal to them.
After many years of feeding hedgehogs in our garden, we use Spikes Hedgehog food as it provides a nutritionally balanced diet formulated especially for hedgehogs. You can buy Spikes food at local shops, garden centres or online.
For clarity, Wildlife Matters is NOT sponsored or supported in any way by Spikes. This recommendation is based on our own experience.
For more information, visit the Spikes website at https://www.spikesfood.co.uk.
Further information on Hedgehogs can be found at
Grace the Hedgehog A project to Save Britain’s Hedgehogs
British Hedgehog Preservation Society A charity dedicated to the protection and conservation of British Hedgehogs
Hedgehog Street A campaign working to protect hedgehogs in urban and countryside areas of Britain
If you enjoyed this blog, please check out more of our wildlife blogs here, or you may prefer to listen to the Wildlife Matters Podcast here.
If you want to support our work
Please click on the Wildlife Matters Patreon Community.
Please click to join the Wildlife Matters Substack Community.
You can donate here.