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Post by markhoopy on Dec 9, 2019 20:14:22 GMT 1
Anyone else here fattening hedgehogs up for Christmas? Lots that were born in the second litter this year aren't big enough to survive the winter - a problem partly caused by the wet autumn that has led to a shortage of food. Jeveniles need to be at least 360 grammes if they are to make it through to spring so any small ones that we see in our garden are brought inside and weighed. This one was 250 grammes, very cold and very hungry. Hot top water in a pint milk carton wrapped in a cloth makes a great hot water bottle for them and after having a good feed it climbed on top of the bottle and went to sleep. Hedgehogs make an unbelievable mess - their poop looks like black treacle, it really stinks, and they have a habit of squirting it up walls too so a plastic-lined run that is easy to keep clean along with a cardbord-box house filled with straw keeps them happy-ish while they put on weight. Seven days later, 90 grammes heavier. An eat-all-you-can diet of dog food, peanuts, suet pellets and dried mealworms means that after three weeks or so and providing the nights haven't got too cold we can let them go again. If you happen to see small hedgehogs at this time of year they will almost certainly need help - without it they will starve and any that are obviously going to struggle can easily be passed on to rescue centres for them to look after. They make a hell of a racket during the night so if you like undisturbed sleep don't try doing it yourself
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Post by Yogi on Dec 9, 2019 20:19:18 GMT 1
Good on ya mate,my dogs would never allow me to do that 👍👍👍
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Post by madmick on Dec 9, 2019 20:21:28 GMT 1
A very worthwhile hobby there mark... well done mate 👏👍
M.M.
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Post by russpuss on Dec 9, 2019 20:21:36 GMT 1
Gypsy chicken, nice cooked in a clay oven allegedly. only joking before the snowflakes arrive.
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Post by iwantalc on Dec 9, 2019 20:45:38 GMT 1
reminds me of an old joke ,, whats the fastest thing on 4 legs , a hedgehog through a travellers site .. but all jokes aside good job you are doing there well done ..
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Post by steve h on Dec 9, 2019 23:14:43 GMT 1
Nice one mark! We take them to a hedgehog rescue. Worth mentioning anyone reading this....just be vigilant with rat poison and make sure only rats can get at it! i.e. access hole size.
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Post by shaunthe2nd on Dec 9, 2019 23:20:12 GMT 1
Hold my hat off to you, seems like a difficult job. My winter hobby involves stripping and rebuilding a knackered old 2 stroke!
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Post by veg on Dec 9, 2019 23:34:03 GMT 1
Mark that is brilliant what you do, don’t tend to see too many out in the sticks anymore, always conscious of living within the ‘eco system’ another part of the great planet we live on.
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Post by donkeychomp on Dec 10, 2019 0:19:46 GMT 1
I doff my hat to you Mark. Very noble of you. Sadly I see fewer and fewer of them these days. But if I do...it will come inside to get warm and fed.
Alex
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Post by markhoopy on Dec 10, 2019 0:38:46 GMT 1
I doff my hat to you Mark. Very noble of you. Sadly I see fewer and fewer of them these days. But if I do...it will come inside to get warm and fed. Alex We've got seven hedgehog houses in the garden and have been putting food out for them for twenty years or so - most I've seen in the garden at one time was thirteen, various sizes from four months-ish old to loaf of bread size, all happily eating. Hedgehogs are in serious decline and need help otherwise they could easily disappear completely.
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Post by steven on Dec 10, 2019 9:15:07 GMT 1
Hi, I too have loads of hogs in my garden,im sure they are all hibernating now. I have made several "Hedgehog Highways" in my fences. I stopped feeding peanuts to the birds/squirrels, as I saw hedgehogs eating the peanuts the birds dropped, and I read that hogs are not supposed to eat peanuts ? www.hedgehogcare101.com/hedgehog-food-list/I regularly put my hog cam out, and discovered that I have at least two foxes that visit my garden most nights too. I usually put out plenty of water dishes and cat biscuits for the hogs when they are not hibernating. I did get a good video of one of them taking a dump ! Steven.
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Post by beardy on Dec 10, 2019 11:20:03 GMT 1
Unfortunately where I live we don’t see hedgehogs any more. Would love to see them here again but I think there are too many things for them to overcome. What we do have is lots of badgers, foxes and deer. Being on top of the north Downs I’m involved with preserving chalk grasslands and we get slow worms and adders along with rare orchids and butterflies. This is a year round thing but keeps me active during the winter.
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Post by markhoopy on Dec 10, 2019 12:36:49 GMT 1
That's very true about nuts - but peanuts aren't nuts, they are legumes and part of the same family as peas, lentils etc. Peanuts are ok for hedgehogs and are something like 50% fat so ideal for putting on weight. As with mealworms though the hedgehogs will eat those before 'proper' food, so if everything is available it will eat mealworms, peanuts, flapjack, dog food in that order, so a couple of mealworms and peanuts are ok just so the dog food is eaten too.
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Post by markhoopy on Dec 10, 2019 12:40:42 GMT 1
What we do have is lots of badgers, foxes and deer. Badgers are the only natural predator of hedgehogs - their front legs are strong enough to open a curled-up hedgehog so they can get to the softer abdomen and eat them. We hear badgers but haven't yet seen one unfortunately.
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Post by reedpete on Dec 10, 2019 13:54:11 GMT 1
Sadly hedgehogs are noticeable in there absence here now, don’t know what happened but I’d say about 10 years ago they just vanished. Sparrows gone too. Just pigeons on the increase...wreck everything..
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Post by dusty350 on Dec 10, 2019 16:06:49 GMT 1
I thought foxes would eat a hedgehog ? They pee on the curled up hog, and fox pee is so rank the hog opens up and the fox then attacks it. Was told that by someone who got lots of hogs in his garden. No hogs in mine, but plenty of urban foxes, bold as brass, going through bins and shagging at 3am, waking everyone up🤬 We do have a lot of Red Kites overhead now which is nice to see. Shame they dont prey on the bloody seagulls and Parakeets that seem to fill our skies😝
Dusty🙂
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Post by markhoopy on Dec 10, 2019 17:39:13 GMT 1
We often see foxes and hedgehogs together but maybe if a fox was hungry enough it would have a go. Red kites are scavengers and eat carrion not live prey .. the parakeets at Kew seem to outnumber everything else for some reason. Awful things.
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Post by stusco on Dec 10, 2019 17:54:57 GMT 1
I Googled parakeets all I got was budgies how are they flying about down sowf?
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Post by dusty350 on Dec 10, 2019 18:07:18 GMT 1
Around Heathrow there are thousands of bloody Parakeets, they are something like ring neck parakeets I think. The legend goes that some escaped from nearby Shepperton studios years ago when they were filming The African Queen. Reality is more like they flew here, liked it and stayed. There is a lot of that going on round here !!😝
Dusty😉
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Post by oldelsieboy on Dec 10, 2019 18:57:34 GMT 1
I Googled parakeets all I got was budgies how are they flying about down sowf?
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Post by steven on Dec 10, 2019 19:27:51 GMT 1
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Post by JonW on Dec 10, 2019 22:59:35 GMT 1
Wow. I didnt know the uk had parrots 'loose' now. We have all manner of parrots here, for months after i emigrated I thought 'oh no one's escaped from its cage!' lol The smaller ones (lorikeets) congregate in trees and squawk so loudly you can't think and the really big ones will chew your house to bits. At night we have huge fruit bats (flying foxes) which are finally coming back now after they chased them out of the park in the city, they screech. We also have a huge kingfisher called a Kookaburra which is one of our cool things, but they sound like they're laughing at you which is weird n cool at the same time. Like the UK, things are changing quite fast here as we have minor birds which are imports and chase the local birds, dive bombing them in flight trying to down them. You could play a WW2 dogfight soundtrack over some video and it would look and feel 'right'. On the ground we have brush turkeys all over sydney now wandering around, its becoming an epidemic over the past 5years or so, you never saw them before that (same with mole crickets, but thats a whole other thing). The turkeys have a wingspan that seems to be way over a meter and they scratch up your garden while making a bizarre honking noise. Cant eat em for xmas before you ask... too scrawny and probably protected, tho if they are it wont be long before there is some kind of season on them I would think as they are everywhere.
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Post by donkeychomp on Dec 10, 2019 23:57:00 GMT 1
Damn parakeets. What I heard was a mating pair were released by the owner who had had enough of the bloody noise they make. Thousands of them now here. About 6 years ago they set up camp for the summer in a huge tree right by my bedroom window. The noise was incredible. I borrowed a mates air rifle one night and went on Safari. Amused the locals for ages as I fired up at the buggers, didn't hit a single one and they just flew back as I reloaded. Foxes are rampant here. I saw one recently as it walked up to my workshop in broad daylight clearly looking for food as it's fur was manky and it looked starved to death. I sidled out and came back with some food and left it there...but it saw me and ran away. A night vision cam does sound interesting though. Would love to see if any hedgehogs come back.
Alex
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Post by markhoopy on Dec 11, 2019 10:40:27 GMT 1
We get foxes every night too and they always seem healthy enough - better nick than the ones you see in more urban areas anyway. As with any wild animal if you put food out regularly for them they will call in and eat it. Everything is welcome in our garden apart from rats and squirrels, and it's odds-on you will get both if there is food around to attract them. Rat poison keeps them under control and the air rifle sorts out the squirrels. Two more have just started appearing in our garden so in a week or so we will have killed about forty.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2019 18:02:45 GMT 1
Our issue down here in Perth WA are Bin Chickens, no idea what a bin chicken is - its white Ibis a lot of them are not necessarily white
Why are they called a bin chicken, because they park themselves in bins to eat the scraps, their normal food is grubs and worms in the ground and they have a pretty substantial bill with which to find them, said bill is also quite adapt at removing bin lids
Another pest which we don't get here but do over east, Jons direction are starlings, they are trying to eradicate them, they are shot on site at the state border here
Sulpher crested c**katoos are another in plague proportions, not just in tropical climbs, where if you leave your resort door open, they will come in and trash your room looking for food, you can hand feed them as they are quite used to humans, my record was 10 on one arm.
They are very interesting to watch, hanging sideways off balcony bars to see where the next food source is then just drop down to it, they make a racket flying home, they too are very smart and are very adept at lifting up hinged bin lids and depositing the contents your bin all over the road
Budgies are another bird in the outback i see on my travels quite often, they aren't so much of a nuisance but you see flocks of over a thousand at a time, in case you didn't know it all wild budgies here are green
We have the odd fox or two around here, in fact i came home one night to see a vixen and her cubs outside a den less than 1/2 mile from my home, just outside the local conservation park
Now Dusty, I thought the dogs would end up as a 4 legged pin cushion if they took on a hodgeheg
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Post by dusty350 on Dec 11, 2019 20:35:36 GMT 1
My black and white Springer is 15 and a half now and just not interested in anything nowadays. Indie, the younger one, is unfazed with cats or birds but will chase squirrels and goes mad when a Fox is about ! She was inquisitive last time I rescued a hoglet, but didn't try to attack it - she had worked out early on that the spines were sharp ! We kept 2 chickens a couple of years back and had a major rat problem - they burrowed under the concrete gravel board from next door. It's the reason we got rid of them in the end, and once the chickens went, so did most of the rats ! Dusty
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Post by shandyboy on Dec 11, 2019 20:43:18 GMT 1
Lots of Bats and Red Kites where I live and sick of having to catch moles!
Think Bedlington Terriers can also kill and attack hedgehogs too, mine go mad when they see them and I have to restrain them and put the Hedgies in a safe place
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Post by pdxjim on Dec 11, 2019 21:12:34 GMT 1
Raccoons, squirrels, rats and coyotes are in abundance here in urban Portland Oregon. Raccoons are big but mostly keep to themselves. They’re mean if cornered, but slow and generally nonconfrontational. If a cat or dog is curious/stupid/slow enough they’ll get done, but the raccoons main diet seems to be chickens and koi fish. Squirrels are annoying for all the obvious reasons. Rats are everywhere because backyard chickens became trendy again about ten years ago. Coyotes are becoming more and more of an urban problem. Basically packs of skinny 30lb wild dogs. They used to be exclusively nocturnal but now can often be seen out in the open during the day. They hunt cats, but thankfully haven gotten ahold of mine yet. My non-bike, animal related hobby is beekeeping, although there really ain’t much to do during the winter.
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Post by JonW on Dec 11, 2019 22:12:55 GMT 1
Sulpher crested c**katoos are another in plague proportions, not just in tropical climbs, where if you leave your resort door open, they will come in and trash your room looking for food, you can hand feed them as they are quite used to humans, my record was 10 on one arm. I always tell my sister in law that these are her favourite bird as we all know she loves a c**katoo... usually delights about half the assembled crowd and gets me a look from her mother We also have bin chickens here not least in Circular Quay where they strut around with the tourists who think they must be some rare local creature lol.
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Post by steve h on Dec 12, 2019 14:59:09 GMT 1
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