Want to feed hedgehogs but not your neighbourhood cats? A hedgehog feeding station may well be the answer. It also helps to keep the food and the hedgehog dry when it is raining. Hedgehogs aren’t keen on rain!
NEWS! Please check out my new Hedgehog Cafe Mark II design….
There are lots of options for feeding stations. You can buy a ready made one – I use a wooden hedgehog house or you can also build your own very cheaply from a plastic box. Please remember that a feeding station should only be used for food – don’t mix dinner with bed and breakfast. Use a separate hedgehog box to provide a house.
You will need:
- A plastic storage box with a lid. A minimum of 12″ wide by 18″ (but can be bigger)
- A stanley knife or strong scissors to cut the hole
- Measuring tape to measure the size of the hole
- Strong tape to cover the cut edges of the hole
- A brick
- Small but heavy ceramic bowls for food
Building the box
- Decide whether you want to have the box with the lid on or whether you want to turn the box upside down with the lid underneath.
- Carefully cut out a hole around 4.5″ square.
- Tape up the edges of the hole – they may be jagged
- Line the box with newspaper
- Put the food at the far end of the box
- Place a brick on top to help prevent the lid being taken off by a fox/cat
Check the box daily and change the newspaper when it gets dirty. Wash the food bowls regularly to keep them clean. Hygiene is very important to prevent spreading bacteria, as it is with all wildlife and bird feeding stations.
You can also decrease the risk of cats getting into the feeding station by placing the entrance up against a fence or wall with only a hedgehog sized gap behind it. Try building a tunnel on the outside of a wooden hedgehog box and build a baffle wall on the inside or create an internal brick wall in a plastic box. It may also be worth having a go adding a plastic tunnel using something like this. Nothing will stop the most persistent cats but please do let me know if you have found any other ways to keep cats out…
If you want to check that your visitor is, in fact, a hedgehog, the best way is to invest in a night camera. You can place a non-toxic ink pad at the entrance followed by a white paper lining. You should then be able to spot hedgehog footprints made by the ink….
If you haven’t spotted a hedgehog before but want to know if they are in your area, you can also check out the Big Hedgehog Map.
Another tell-tale sign of a hedgehog visiting your feeding station is what is left behind. A hedgehog will leave some crumbs like in the picture above, whereas a cat will wipe the bowl clean. A hedgehog may also leave you a calling card in the bowl or nearby. For this reason it is also vital to keep your feeding station clean. I change the newspaper lining daily – to avoid any parasites or bacteria passing between hedgehogs. I also move the feeding stations around regularly to new locations. I site the feeding stations in open areas where I can monitor them with my night cameras and easily access them to top up the food and water. I keep them separate from hibernation boses.
For suggestions of what food to put in your feeding station please read my blog.
I run a hedgehog rescue in York. My work is entirely self-funded. If you have found this information useful you can read more about me here and also how to support my work.
I also make silver jewellery inspired by nature and wildlife to raise funds for my hedgehog rescue work. Please check out my online jewellery shop here.
Little Silver Hedgehog 
Re cats getting into feeding station. Hedgehog Cabin on Twitter suggests putting the water bowl just a bit in front of the station entrance. Hedgehogs will walk into water and then into feeding station while a cat will not be able to negotiate around it to enter into the small entrance and they don’t be able to get through the door with bowl in the way!
When i discovered I had rats coming into my garden and were eating the food
I was putting out for the hedgehogs I contacted the local council who sent the pest control people to my house. I had already bought various traps and poison but the pest control left other traps and poison which I didn`t have to pay for. The way it works is, the rats eat the poison, then go away to die. After a few weeks there were no more rats and the hedgehogs, which had stopped coming into my garden while the rats were there, slowly started to return. I now have several visiting every night and one living in one of the two houses I have in my garden.
I have heard before not to mix bed with breakfast, so I built 2 boxes, but my hedgehog likes to sleep near her food. Maybe likes to protect it from occasional visitors.
i had a hedgehog come into my garden last night so i will do this!
I would love to build a feeding station for my local hogs but as I don’t have a garden I think it will be tampered with. Any solutions welcome
Hello. How do you stop rats eating the food. We have a lot of them and hedgehogs in our rural environment? Alison@brametourte.com
It’s supposed to be small CAT not call.
I made a feeding station exactly as instructed but a cat got in. We saw it on the wildlife camera. It isn’t a small call either.
Hello, unfortunately there is no way to stop rats but I generally don’t find that hedgehog food causes a rat problem. It is more likely something else that causes the problem. Rats are everywhere so seeing the occasional one is normal but, if you are seeing lots, and in daylight then there is a rat problem that needs investigating. I have fed hedgehogs for a decade and only ever seen the occasional rat…..
Hi, you talk about neighbors cat, but you forgot the rats. I feed hedgehogs for a couple of years. All of a sudden, there was no food in the mornings left. My neighbor showed me a couple of days later Fotos of a ratfamily. Since this time I don’t feed anymore. I feel sorry for the hedgehogs, but I don’t like rats in my garden.
You are absolutely correct. This is a very old pic and sadly the best pic I have of the night visiting hogs but it does show mealworms. I used to feed them myself until a couple of years ago when I learnt of the research. I will definitely update it when I get a better pic x
LSH you are a marvel in every way and I have been reading your blog voraciously since discovering it – but am I right in thinking the top photo shows 3 hogs eating mealworms? Elsewhere you’ve talked about the advice NOT to feed mealworms due to risks of metabolic bone disease? Or maybe it’s my tired eyes on a Friday night playing tricks on me, in which case sorry!
Thank you. Will be constructing same in next week. We have the box ready.x😊
Thank you so much Kathy!
Thanks so much for this hedgehog feeding station instructions! I can’t wait to make one for the hedgehog that comes into our garden! Just fantastic!! Thanks for this great blog post!
This is a great idea and I love your suggestion for checking paw prints with ink, my wild child would love to do this.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Thank you so much!
Reblogged this on Rattiesforeverworldpresscom.
Great ideas 🙂
So glad you like the post! 🙂
Great ideas, and cute photos. I like the idea of the ink pad footprints 🙂