In the garden, in the country or in the garden, people often meet hedgehogs. Someone even feeds them. Most of the thorny animals are treated with cow's milk. The animals enjoy them with pleasure, unaware of the hidden danger of such food for their health. Making friends with these forest dwellers is not difficult if you have basic knowledge of how to feed them.
A little about hedgehogs
The hedgehog is an insectivorous animal. Contrary to this, hedgehogs feed not only on insects, but also on small rodents, snails and slugs, frogs. They often steal eggs from chicken coops. In a hungry year, the animals are not averse to feasting on vegetation: strawberries, mushrooms, grass.
These animals, despite the stereotype inculcated in them, do not carry mushrooms, apples and sweets on their backs. Such a load is beyond their strength, and they do not want to spoil the needles at all. On the thorny backs of hedgehogs, you can see only small forest debris: leaves, twigs, blades of grass.
Hedgehogs, as a rule, visit people in orchards and vegetable gardens at night, since it is this time of day for them that is hunting. While no one is there, the uninvited guests run briskly in search of food, exterminating harmful insects (bear, ants), small rodents (mice), and if they are lucky, they feast on canned dog or cat food left on the street from bowls.
Sometimes these animals can be found in the country or in the garden during the daytime. In this case, people are called to feed them. Unfortunately, the main food in such a situation is milk, and it is cow milk. It is necessary to figure out whether it is possible to feed a hedgehog with such milk.
Can hedgehogs be fed milk?
These crumbs in the body lack an enzyme that breaks down lactose. If you offer a hedgehog cow's milk, he, of course, will drink it, but soon he will begin to suffer from indigestion. Sometimes food poisoning is observed in hedgehogs, diarrhea begins.
Moreover, there are antibodies in cow's milk that can simply destroy the body of a small animal. So says the zoologist of the Moscow Zoo Alexei Turovsky. At the same time, the specialist notes that this does not apply to goat or dog milk.
The zoologist explains the killing effect of cow's milk for hedgehogs by the fact that in natural conditions such food is completely excluded for them. “In order not to make the animal worse, you shouldn't feed it at all,” says Turovsky about the hedgehogs. The zoologist claims that any wild animal, if it is healthy, is able to feed itself.
"The generally accepted opinion that hedgehogs are hungry and want to eat is a delusion," the zoologist notes. In summer, hedgehogs really do not have problems with food. However, in early spring, these animals still need food.
In this case, hedgehogs can be fed with improvised food: cat or dog food, raw eggs, boiled sausage, tomatoes, lettuce, apples, carrots, pears. If possible, after feeding the hedgehog should be poured into a bowl of fresh cool water.
