Hedgehogs are spiny mammals native to Europe, Africa, and Asia. They are distant ancestors to shrews. They seem rather cute and harmless. These creatures can be pets. If given the proper shots. But they are most often found burrowing in your backyard. Causing a calamity to your gardens.
Are you wondering how to get rid of hedgehogs, safely?
Well, you can, and the ways are safe enough for you and the little creatures. Firstly, you need to identify that there is an infestation. As oftentimes it’s hard to tell what’s causing so much trouble in your garden. Fencing, repellants, and traps are three ways that help you get rid of these pests quickly.
There are a few more intricacies with these methods. As with all solutions, there are many factors to consider.
Keep on scrolling to get a better idea!
How To Understand Infestation Indicators
Hedgehogs mainly get their dirty work done at night. Because they are nocturnal animals, it becomes a grueling task to spot one in action. However, there are a few techniques to test whether you’ve got an infestation on your hands.
The indicators are rather subtle, but once you know what to look for, you can easily identify the seriousness of the infestation.
The most obvious indicator would be their footprints. Which are easily distinguishable. If the ground of your yard is soft, the footprints can be observed easily.
If not, you can set mud traps or sand traps, and observe overnight. Their footprints are between 2-3 cm long and 3 cm wide. With slender toes in the back.
The feces of hedgehogs are also a telltale sign of their presence. Normally very dark in color and up to 5 cm long and slender. This makes it distinguishable from other animals such as cats or dogs.
They are not moist but dry. It contains compactly organized fragments of insect exoskeletons.
How To Get Rid of Hedgehogs From Your Area
Depending on the region you are from, hedgehogs can be seen as pets or pests. Hedgehogs that have been introduced in new areas lack predators. These are often the ones that are seen as pests.
They take a toll on the flowers and the insect habitat that they inhabit. As they are omnivorous.
Some consider them as a live natural insecticide. Their natural diet is invertebrate insects, they also eat lizards and eggs of birds!
They mainly get rid of pesky snails, slugs, and all kinds of bugs. Those which wreak havoc on your plants. But in doing so, they also wreak havoc in your garden.
They can burrow almost all their waking hours. Leaving massive holes in the yard. This has many adverse effects on the garden’s natural state, as well as the aesthetics.
In order to make your yard less appealing to hedgehogs, you have to remove their food sources. This mainly consists of slugs, snails, beetles, or worms.
If you are going to go for this method, you can’t use chemical means. Use natural methods to get rid of these bugs instead of chemicals. As they also affect hedgehogs.
Once you recognized that your garden or backyard is being infested by hedgehogs, you can begin. There’s ways to combat the damage caused by these mammals.
You will need to consider the best way to deal with them. This will depend on a few things, like where you live and what the conditions are in your yard.
How to Prevent Hedgehogs From Entering Your Area
Without any natural predators, hedgehogs easily increase in number. They become a significant predator pest. Understand the infestation indicators, and then act accordingly. Some procedures are given below.
- Getting rid of hedgehogs by means of traps.
- Catching them with gloves is the safest.
- Utilizing fencing to block their access to your garden altogether is the most ideal in any situation.
Some more procedures to get rid of the hedgehogs are discussed further. Keep reading to find them out!
Fencing
This is a method of prevention. Don’t trap them every time they appear in your garden. This prevents them from entering at all. This doesn’t eliminate the possibility of hedgehogs appearing in your garden.
As they can burrow. Instead, this repels them to some degree. if your garden is already not that appealing.
Installing a relatively small strong wire fence can help (our pick: VEVOR Razor Wire). Penetrating 5 inches into the ground prevents hedgehogs from digging. Make sure there are no preoccupied burrows. Before putting up a fence.
Water-Based Repellents
This works great as an environmentally friendly pest control. These tools easily keep hedgehogs away.
They do not harm them in any way. It instead causes them a little fright. So that it doesn’t further attract them.
Most of these are motion activated sprinkler systems (our pick: Havahart 5277 Motion-Activated Animal Repellent & Sprinkler). They deter any unwanted pests by blasting bursts of water.
It goes upto 8m when detecting any movement. The burst of water effectively scares away any intruding animal nearby.
This can work during the day or night. And as they use water only they refrain from polluting the environment of your garden.
Traps
You usually use this method to keep others away from your property. Though the ones already in your yard cannot be removed by this.
Mechanical traps are usually great for catching hedgehogs. They can be used continuously for catching them.
You can catch hedgehogs by using different types of traps (our pick: Havahart 1079 Large 1-Door Humane Animal Live Trap). Professional or homemade traps can both be used.
But it is recommended you lay traps at the beginning. Of bird breeding season. This is when hedgehogs are at their highest damaging activity.
Trapping and then releasing the animals into a remote area is recommended. This way, you don’t harm or kill them. Just remove them safely from your yards.
FAQs
Can you keep hedgehogs as pets?
Yes, hedgehogs make for an excellent choice in pets. In their captive state, they make for great company. Hedgehogs are fun as they are rather active. They are low-maintenance once they have become comfortable with you over time.
Do hedgehogs carry rabies?
It is very rare that hedgehogs carry rabies. Only a few cases in the wild have been reported. But since they don’t bite there is no chance of contraction.
Although rabies is not a concern. Salmonella cases have been reported from contact with them.
Are hedgehogs fast?
No, they don’t break the sound barrier like in popular media. Unlike Sonic, they clock out at 4 miles per hour. At maximum in terms of speed. Which means most dogs are faster than common hedgehogs!
Conclusion
We hope we’ve answered your questions about how to get rid of hedgehogs. Safely too at that! Now you’re all ready to take care of those pesky pests in your backyard.
Wrapping up, always make sure that you’re maintaining essential safety procedures when handling these pests. They are cute for the most part. But they’re responsible for a lot of problems in the yard.
Stay with us for more hedgehog related queries!
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