Why does your garden need a hedgehog feeding station ?
Most gardens are kept pretty tidy. Unfortunately, tidy isn’t what wildlife need.
A great wildlife garden will have plenty of leaf litter, log piles, non-dead headed flowers. As much of your garden waste as possible should be piled around your garden to allow bugs and beetles to live – these are the best food for hedgehogs !
For information on what hedgehogs have been found to eat naturally : https://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/animals/article/european-hedgehog-food-feeding-behaviour-diet. Basically they like adult beetles, earwigs and earthworms.
If you have a tidy garden then this is a reason to put food out for hedgehogs. Bugs are best, but hedgehogs need to eat. So if there are less bugs then cat food is a useful alternative.
The downside of cat food is that it is pungent and may attract other animals – so placing them in a structure that hedgehogs can get in and out of but other animals can’t provides the perfect solution.
Although you can buy hedgehog feeding stations the hedgehogs won’t really care what they look like – they just need to feel protected.
This brick feeding station is a great alternative to one purchased from a shop. It will last forever – as there is no wood to rot.
To find the instructions to building this you can go to http://pembrokeshire.online/2020/11/alsager-urban-wildlife-initiative-help-a-hedgehog/.
Thanks to B P Collins for their wonderful sponsorship of this project 2023.