The spiky animals are home in Europe, Asia, Africa – and New Zealand. They were introduced to the latter via ships, against fleas on board. What else belongs to their diet? How can you help your garden visitors?
What they eat
Hedgehogs’ normal diet is beetles, worms, millipedes, slugs, caterpillars and earwigs.
They search through the ground and eat a wide range of any invertebrates or insects they can find.
Picture credits Hedgehog Street, ‘What do wild hedgehogs eat?’ https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/about-hedgehogs/diet/
Their diet contributes to the declining hedgehog numbers in the UK: their preys are dwindling due to agricultural intensification and pesticides.
They also eat some fallen fruit, like apples. Though, this is only in addition to their main diet.
How to feed them
If you want to put out food for hedgehogs, make sure not to take milk. They get diarrhoea from it. Bread can make them ill, as well as mealworms.
It will help them however if you leave a plate or lower pot coaster with water. Especially for hot and dry summer nights. Don’t forget to make your garden well accessible!
You could make some hedgehogs happy with tinned cat or dog food, but none with fish. Cat biscuits work as well.
There is special hedgehog food!
You can get food for your hedgehog e.g. on littlepeckers.co.uk, gardenwildlifedirect.co.uk or arkwildlife.co.uk.
Most helpful for the little garden visitors is if you feed them in late summer/beginning of autumn, as they need some fat reserves for hibernation. Want to know what hibernation is or find out some other interesting things about these nocturnal animals? Check out our other post, like about Interesting facts about hedgehogs!
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