Essential Oils: I have been advised that oils that are considered "hot" are toxic to hedgehogs. Oils that are considered hot: Cassia, Cinnamon Bark, Clove, Hyssop, Lemongrass, Ocotea, Oregano, Peppermint, Thieves, and Thyme. These are often contained in blends.
Leave out foods like tinned dog or cat food and crushed cat or dog biscuits. Supply good quality, meaty hedgehog food from wildlife food suppliers. Never feed hedgehogs milk or bread - milk can cause diarrhoea and bread isn't very nutritious.
Many hedgehog owners have had success using lavender essential oil for their grouchy, stressed hedgehogs. Apply one or two drops topically, or use in a diffuser in the room.
In order to keep their hedgehog from getting smelly, many hedgehog owners will give daily foot baths and change out the bedding regularly. Some hedgehog owners even manage to litter train their hedgehogs.
Strimmers and garden tools can kill and injure hedgehogs who choose to make their nests in long grass, hedges and compost heaps. Please check all areas before strimming, forking over or cutting down foliage to prevent injuries from occurring.
A badger and a hedgehog feeding together on a lawn. Badgers are hedgehogs' main predators in the UK. They are the only animals strong enough to tackle a hedgehog's spiny defences. Hedgehogs and badgers share what's known as an asymmetric intraguild predation relationship.
Hedgehogs are very sensitive to smells. Often, when they encounter a new smell, they will start to produce a large amount of frothy saliva. Then, they reach to their side and spread the saliva over their spines. They often wiggle around in weird positions in order to try to cover all of these spines.
Rats apparently hate the smell of mint, whilst hedgehogs seem to quite like it. Peppermint essential oil sprinkled by their bolt holes, or plenty of mint planted in your garden, could work as a deterrent.
All hedgehogs take time to adapt to a new environment or their new home. They sometimes get scared easily from noises, disturbances, and changes to the environment.
Traps need to be at such a high density that they are not feasible, and current toxins are not manufactured to target hedgehogs. On a smaller scale, dogs, thermal imaging, spotlighting and intensive trapping are all effective tools for finding and removing hedgehogs from the environment.
We DO NOT recommend ANY candles, incense, or essential oils to be used anywhere near your hedgehog. Your pet has no way to let you know if what you are using is hurting them in any way.
Encouraging hedgehogs
Making sure they have lots of thick dense undergrowth and a variety of lengths of grass to hide and nest in is always good. You can also make your garden a hot spot for the slugs, snails and bugs that hedgehogs like to munch on.
Hedgehogs should never be fed avocados, onions, grapes or raisins, chocolate, any raw meat or egg yolks.
Threats: The biggest threat to hedgehogs is probably habitat loss, with the change from pastoral farming to arable crops, over the last 30 years. The use of chemicals in gardens and for intensive farming kills the creatures hedgehogs need for food and may also poison them directly. Many are also killed on roads.
Any form of pest control affects the hedgehogs' food chain, but barrier products like the copper and coffee grounds mentioned above means the slug or snail remains healthy and safe for the hedgehog to eat. Can provide a home for hedgehogs and should be carefully turned over before burning.
The most important invertebrates in their diet are worms, beetles, slugs, caterpillars, earwigs and millipedes. As well as these, they also eat a wide range of other insects. More infrequently, they will take advantage of carrion, frogs, baby rodents, baby birds, birds' eggs and fallen fruit.
Long-term elevated stress levels, as in humans, can have serious physiological consequences for hedgehogs. The higher level of stress shows that being handled and placed in captivity can cause long-term stress in the animals. This highlights the importance of periods of captivity being as short as possible.
They mostly discern their world through smell, sound and touch. Hedgehogs can sense fear and anxiety in a person's voice or manner of touch. When a hedgehog senses fear in a person as they touch them (perhaps because they are afraid of being poked), it is more likely to react with nervousness — huffing and puffing.
Onions and garlic, like avocados, contain Persin. This toxin can cause vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, and loss of appetite in hedgehogs. In large doses, it can be fatal.
The poo of a healthy hedgehog is black to dark brown in colour. Each poo is around 1.5 to 5 centimetres long. They are sausage shape, with one or both ends slightly pointed. They are often almost sparkly due to the bits of beetle skeleton they contain.
We don't recommend olive oil or coconut oil in their rinse water. This is because it clings to their skin and traps bacteria when they're back in their cage. This can lead to fungal infections, that in turn can cause quill loss, and it is hard to treat.
Huffing, Puffing, and Popping
It is quite natural for the hedgehog to be scared or nervous and the huffing and puffing noises are an attempt to scare you away. Keep in mind your hedgehog may have just been woke up during what may be for it the middle of the night.
Although hedgehogs have many predators, including large birds and most carnivores, but only the strongest predators, like badgers, can open a curled-up hedgehog. When looking for a home, a hedgehog has a few requirements. They need a dry shelter, well-drained soil, and an abundance of the insects they love to eat.
Compared to humans, and even dogs and cats, hedgehogs have limited binocular vision. They have a hard time with depth perception and will often fall from dangerous heights, because they simply cannot tell how far they are from the ground. Other hedgehog senses are much stronger and overcompensate for this weakness.