One hedgehog or two?

2 point 4

About 6 weeks ago, I noticed that a hedgehog had left a calling call in my garden.  This was no surprise as I have had them before but I had stopped feeding them this year as a neighbour had had a persistent rodent problem in the Spring.  I didn’t need any encouragement to set up the feeding station again and I have been feeding about 30g (the contents of a convenient sized scoop) of dry Spike’s dinner/night. The water bowl is outside.

Unfortunately last year, my house was broken into and I installed security cameras as a future deterrent.  There is often a positive from a negative and the cameras have enabled me to spend a long time watching the hedgehog on my back lawn popping into the feeding station and drinking.  It’s a good job I can watch it back on fast forward!

I have noticed that the first visitor is about 8.30 pm and the last about 5am. There can be as many as 7 visits (all singleton) to the feeding station/night.  Is the early morning hedgehog likely to be the same one as the 8.30pm and calling in for a ‘kebab’ on its way home from a night on the tiles?  I am concerned that if it’s only one, I might end up with a little fatty one!

Should I feed less or more?  It’s all gone every morning.

If it’s relevant information, location is sub-urban and about 0.25 miles to open countryside.

Thanks for your help.

madpenguin

Hedgehogs generally don't overeat in the wild.
I have some that come several times in one night and they sometimes don't eat all I put out.
If you are using a night time camera you may be able to see 'markings' on the spines which you cannot see in daylight.One may have a dark patch in one area another may have a stripe.Sometimes it's the way they walk,I had one which walked with everything dragging on the ground and another that walked on tippy toes!Some are fast and some are slow.
If you see 2 together you can judge different sizes.
Take a close look and see if you can see small differences 

AnniD

I agree with what Madpenguin says, our camera picks up various different shadings on the spines. They also seem to have different mannerisms (or should that be hogisms). One walks round the feeding station at least twice before going in, another is like Usain Bolt, straight in, no messing about.
I appreciate your concern about overfeeding, if you think he/she is starting to look a bit overweight then maybe put less food out, but bear in mind we are heading into late autumn and they will be hibernating before too long.

treehugger80

we thought we had a hedgehog visiting our garden,

so we marked with a bit of nail varnish (we asked out local hedgehog preservation society and they said that was fine) and set up a camera,

after marking on multiple nights turns out we had 6 visiting in one night!

we also weigh them if we get the chance, anything over 700g is fine for overwintering, we had one that was 1.4kg during the early summer!

Lizzie27

You are so lucky, I would love to see hedgehogs in this garden but we haven't seen any here for 11 years, even though we're semi-rural on the edge of the city. We do however apparently have lots of local badgers so I suspect that's the answer.