We are lucky to have a couple of hedgepigs that live in our garden and several that regularly visit it. We had been feeding our hedgepigs last year and I had made a temporary feeder that was made of a few bricks and a piece of wood over the top. I was going to make one over the winter but Frank beat me to it by buying this one.

View from the right-hand side. The tube coming out of the back holds the data cable for the camera.

This the view from the left-hand side showing that it has two entrances.

This is the view with the top open. You can see the off set partitions to stop the cats getting in. There are two bowls. One for the food and one importantly for water. I added a IP camera which you can see on the left hand side. The hinged stay on the left is used when it is windy to keep the lid up when accessing for maintenance (as you can see in the photo below).

Hedgehog feeder with new microphone.

Due to the fact that the hedgehogs kept moving the feeding dishes about and making a mess I made some little clips to hold them in place.

Things to take note of when making a Hedgepig feeder

It isn’t too difficult to make a Hedgepig feeder and there are various YouTube videos available that show you. Here are the main points to consider when making one:

• The important thing is that the box should be sturdy and reasonably heavy so other animals like foxes can't over turn it (you could put some bricks on top to weigh it down if the materials used are light).
  
  
• It should have an offset partition to the entrance to prevent cats getting in.
  
  
• It should be made from waterproof materials so that it doesn't rot or allow the food to get wet.
  
  
• It shouldn't have a bottom where the hedgehogs are feeding. Ours is sitting on our patio slabs. I can easily move the feeder to one side, wash down the slabs (as they do sometimes poo when they feed) to keep everything clean and healthy.
  
  
• Easy to get into for maintenance and to add the food and change the water.
  
  
• It is also very useful to have two entrances. Although hedgehogs are not territorial some of the older and larger hogs can get a bit aggressive and be bullies when there is food involved. The second entrance gives an escape route for any younger hogs.

Update

We now have 2 Hedgehog feeding stations! We were keen to give the hedgehogs a bit of a choice between wet and dried food. So we trailed putting out some Tescos meat based wet cat food just in bowls in front of the feeder. This seemed to go down well although we noted from the Patio camera that one of our local neighbours cats wasn't as fussy about their food as our cats were and would scoff it down before the hedgehog could get a look in some nights so we invested in another feeder to deter the neighbours cat.

The new feeder with camera on the right hand side. For the techies amongst you to incorporate the new camera and the Gate camera which is attached to the side I had to incorporate a 4 port switch which you can just see under the piece of cross wood on the left hand side. Fortunately this runs off 12v so I was able to use the 12v supply that I was using for the microphones although I had to uprate the specification of the power supply to cope with the additional power demand.