Happy Hedgehog Day! 🦔

Today is Hedgehog Day, Happy Hedgehog Day to our spiky friends! Hedgehog Day is celebrated every year on the 2nd of February. Hedgehogs are probably the UKs favorite garden visitor: they are a loved garden visitor who brightens up our gardens.

Right now, Hedgehogs are still hibernating. They still have a while to go until they 'wake up'; anywhere from four weeks from now, to eight weeks from now. Hedgehogs typically start hibernating around late October and into November. They will hibernate until March or April the following year. Basically, Hedgehogs, like other wild animals, will hibernate throughout the Winter season.

Hedgehogs might be hibernating right now. However, there are ways that you can help Hedgehogs in the coming few weeks when they come out of hibernation. One good way to help them, is to provide them with water in your garden: but make sure the water that you put out is a shallow bowl, so that they don't drown. If you have a pond, you can make it easier for small animals such as Hedgehogs to get out, by making the pond shallow at the start. Also, some sort of ramp built into the pond can help Hedgehogs and other small animals get out of the pond, if they fall into it.

Water is essential for animals to survive. Therefore, you can make a big difference to wild animals, just by providing water for them.

Another thing essential for Hedgehogs survival, is: food.

When Hedgehogs come out of hibernation, they are hungry and looking for food. You can help them with this too, by providing them with food. You can buy specially made Hedgehog food, such as the Spikes food above. Spikes has both dry Hedgehog food, and wet Hedgehog food, and you will get a good selection of Hedgehog food with them. One type of food that you will want to avoid giving Hedgehogs, is bread (also, avoid giving them milk).

They can however eat cat and dog food.

Another way that you can help Hedgehogs, is by providing them with a home; a place of shelter. With shrinking habitats and a destruction of hedges, Hedgehogs are finding less and less places to live in. Therefore, providing them a home in your garden helps them massively. You can provide them a home with a Hedgehog made home - as you can see with the link above, you can find many different Hedgehog homes on Amazon. Or, you can provide Hedgehogs with a home by planting hedges in your garden, and making your garden Hedgehog and wildlife friendly.

There are other ways to help Hedgehogs and wildlife in your garden by being wildlife friendly: by not using harmful chemicals in the garden. One of the most harmful chemicals in the garden, is slug repellent. As Hedgehogs eat slugs, putting down slug repellent in your garden can be deadly for Hedgehogs, and other wild animals. By avoiding using harmful chemicals like slug repellent, you can prevent Hedgehogs and other wild animals from being poisoned.

Other animals that are in your garden also eat slugs, and therefore, they can be poisoned too if you put slug repellent down. Other wild animals which eat slugs included: toads and frogs. So, if you want to avoid wild animals being poisoned in your garden, don't use any chemicals that will be harmful to them!

The final way that you can help Hedgehogs in your garden, is to make your garden easily accessible to Hedgehogs. Have a small entrance at the bottom of your fence where Hedgehogs can pass through easily. One of the main things which are harming Hedgehogs, is that they cannot access gardens, are gardens are becoming more closed off. By having a Hedgehog entrance, you can help these cute animals enter your garden.

By making your garden Hedgehog friendly and wildlife friendly, you can help these animals, and other wild animals massively.

Happy Hedgehog Day! 🦔