In the spring (in April), 5-7 blind newborn hedgehogs with soft whitish needles appear at the hedgehog, which she feeds with milk. Until the month of age, the young are in a nest arranged by the female in the form of a hut of dry leaves, brushwood, moss. If a nest is discovered by a person or an animal, the hedgehog carries in the teeth of its babies to another lair.
After 1.5-2 months the hedgehogs leave the nest, but they begin their independent life only late in the autumn. By winter (in October) the hedgehogs get fat and fall into. deep hibernation, finding shelter in thick bushes, depressions of the soil, covered with fallen leaves, among the forest brushwood. A hedgehog wakes up only with the cessation of frost.
The hedgehog value can not be estimated unambiguously It can be both useful and harmful. It brings harm by eating useful insects (bumble bees, bees, deadly beetles, beetles, etc.), insectivorous animals (shrews, moles), chicks and eggs of birds nesting on the ground.
At the same time, the hedgehog is beneficial, destroying such pests of the forest as horseshoes and their larvae, caterpillars and pupae of the sawflies, scoops, weevils, eating mouse-like rodents and poisonous insects.
