Keep Hedgehogs and Frogs safe near netting
Our Electric netting is absolutely fab for keeping your chickens safe from the foxes and other animals (badgers and rabbits) at bay !!
Very occasionally though some of our favourite wildlife friends- hedgehogs and frogs - get caught against an electric netting and get injured or even worse. If you are using Electric netting, here are some tips to help keep your local hedgehogs, frogs and toads safe too.
Hedgehogs, frogs and toads and their young are all on the move just now looking for food. When most animals get a zap from electric netting they very sensibly run away but hedgehogs may just roll into a ball to protect themselves and then receive repeated electric shocks which can harm or kill them.
This doesn’t happen very often but if you are lucky enough to live in a hedgehog hot spot here are some things you can do
1) check all around the base of your netting regularly and move any ‘hogs that you find close to it gently away from the netting (preferably to a nice slug rich area of the garden...!) The same applies to frogs and toads which are also at risk of getting zapped by the netting because they don’t always flee from the netting either.
2) if you are using electric netting to keep your hens safe from foxes (and not primarily to keep out rather than smaller predators like minks, stoats or weasels) then you could consider cutting the second horizontal line of netting (that’s the 2nd line up from the ground) . To do that, you just cut the line of net at the first and last post which means no current will go through this line – see diagram below.
any worries/questions about cutting the net or anything else, please just ask
(tel 01620 860058 and email [email protected])
3) and/or you could place a low barrier around in front of the base of all around the netting – making sure its not touching the netting (plastic sheeting is ok to touch the netting though)
Hope that all makes sense - any questions please just ask!!
(tel 01620 860058 and email [email protected])
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