How to safely share your garden with hedgehogs

Hedgehog numbers are in steep decline. Urban sprawl is destroying their habitat, and traffic is killing them. Many are waking from hibernation right now. Females will be getting pregnant soon too. To do your bit to save these spiky recluses, try doing very little at all.

Be an inconstant gardener "It breaks my heart when people are cutting hedges and strimming grass," says Bev Truss, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator and veterinary nurse with Hogsprickle Wildlife Carers. If you must mow, don't be fastidious.

“Wildlife love lazy gardeners,” says Truss. “Don’t shove the lawnmower under hedges or thick bushes. This is where a hedgehog sleeps during the day. If you do put the lawnmower under, you are going to get a dead hedgehog,” she says. “I see so many hedgehogs badly, sometimes fatally injured by garden accidents. I’ve had two reports this year of hedgehogs run over by robotic mowers.” Check for hedgehog nests in long grass first.

Go wild A lawn like Wimbledon means no love for the hedgehog. Try leaving a metre-wide margin of long grass around the perimeter. "This gives hedgehogs a place to sleep in the daytime and maybe even to make a nest to give birth to their hoglets. They need wild areas," says Truss. Weedkiller and insecticide kill the hedgehog's food. "People put down slug pellets, then the hedgehog comes along and eats the slug that's been poisoned and then the hedgehog gets sick. There is no cure for that."

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Life is a highway Solid walls and fences around your garden mean the hedgehog can't visit to get food or to nest. "Cut one or two CD-sized holes in your fence. This will let the hedgehogs through," says Truss. Without this pathway, they will go on to the road. "Housing estates can get together to make a wee hedgehog highway right through their estate from garden to garden." Hedges and holes, not fences and walls.

Waist management Wild food of worms, beetles, caterpillars and slugs is important for hedgehogs. Supplement this prudently. "You could leave out a small amount of cat or dog food each night," says Truss. Just not too much. "People overfeed everything. That's why we've got fat dogs and cats. We don't want fat wildlife too. We don't want fat hedgehogs."

Prickly customer A pile of sticks or leaves in the corner of the garden will make a lovely hoglet nest this April and May. You'll find nesting hedgehogs under sheds and decking too. Just do not disturb. "If a sow has had her babies and she is disturbed, quite often she will just leg it," says Truss. "Or she will cannabalise them. You've got to be very careful with hedgehogs."

SOS If you think a hedgehog is in distress, call an expert. "Last year was a nightmare with lockdown because people were bored," says Truss. "A lot of these animals were being caught and brought into the house because the kids wanted a project."

“A lady phoned and said she had a hedgehog for two weeks and it had stopped eating. Basically the hedgehog had a cushion in the living room that it lay on all day, eating grapes and bananas.”

To help a hedgehog, check with Ireland's Wildlife Rehabilitators Association (iwra.ie) first. "Don't spend time on social media. Keyboard warriors give out the most annoying and inappropriate advice. They are not experts."