Usually, the main concern about making hole in the fence is whether it will cause more rats around the garden. No one really likes to have them around, they can contaminate food stores etc.

But giving access to hogs shouldn’t mean inviting rats as well to your garden. The reason why can be found in the main characteristics that differentiate the 2 animals.

RATS HEDGEHOGS
Excellent CLIMBING SKILLS None
Do not like them OPEN SPACES Like to roam
Cheese, fruits, meat, bread FAVOURITE FOOD Slugs, insects, worms
High LEVEL OF DEPENDENCY ON HUMAN FOOD Low

RATS

Rats are attracted to food. Any food that is left out and easily accessed can become a rat magnet. Rats move quickly and are excellent climbers and have no problem climbing vertical brick walls, fences or trees, and bushes. Unlike hedgehogs, rats can easily come to your garden with or without a hole in your fence. They are very clever but they don’t like crossing open spaces and much prefer to stay in cover.

HEDGEHOGS

While hedgehogs are lacking climbing skills, they like to roam and sniff around the garden and appreciate open spaces. Plus a back garden on its own can provide a full dinner for hedgehogs since they favorites are slugs and insects. They do appreciate food supplied by humans but they are perfectly OK without it. If you would like to feed your resident hogs you can try out some tricks that will help you keep away the rats from the hedgehog food.

Tricks on how to feed hedgehogs without attracting other rodents:

  1. Place your feeder into a more open area – rats don’t like open spaces
  2. If you have a hedgehog home, place the food right next to the home so the hedgehogs can eat it right away giving no chance to rats to eat it
  3. Hedgehogs are mainly active at night so try to put out food only around dinner time
  4. Don’t put too much food out. 100g of cat food is enough dinner for a hedgehog