July looks set to be ‘hectic hedgehog’ month for the RSPCA after calls about the prickly creatures peaked during this time last year.

From a total of 10,644 calls about hedgehogs made to the RSPCA’s national helpline throughout 2018, the number of calls spiked in July at 1867.

Calls from the North West of England totalled 14,712 in 2018, 257 of which were made in July.

Across 2018, an average of 5.7 hedgehogs per day were admitted to one of the charity’s specialist wildlife centres, but in July, this rose to an average of 12.4 per day.