Help…2 hogs wanting my hedgehog house!
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Hi … Myself and my husband have been delighted to have a nightly hog visitor for quite a few weeks now, a small juvenile, we have been feeding him/her and it has been lovely sitting outside watching him, we made a hedgehog house and tempted him in there with the food to get him ready and used to it for the Winter, he has been going in, munching on his food… Tonight though, we got a proper shock, he was in the house and I saw a huge hog go in there, They stayed in there together for 5 minutes, then the little one came scurrying out…. We had a look and the big hog was snoozing away in there! We feel really bad that he has been outed! Should we get another hog house quickly?
This is why putting food inside a house intended for lodging isn’t a good idea! It will attract undesirables to take a peek.
One just can’t pick and choose who takes a lease on the property though, gazumping is alive and kicking in the world of hedgepigs and you can’t really stop it. You could put in another house, totally up to you, but there’s no guarantee that any of them will choose it and hedgehogs being hedgehogs may still fight over the other one! They’re incredibly fussy when it comes to where they live.
Good luck!
Thank you for your reply and advice… LOL at the gazumping!! I have moved the food back, outside of the house. I thought he might have been scared off by the big hog, but he came tonight and happily ate a full bowl of food, so was good to see him, maybe I will make the tunnel area smaller so the big hog cant get it, but that seems a bit mean! I just want them all to be happy, I think another hog house may be worth a try!
If you put food in a hedgehog house, you could have 10 or more hogs visiting it each night, as they sniff out the food, and follow each other’s scent to find the food source.
What I have done, is have a feeding station and a hedgehog home, both separated from each other – the feeding station is just a plastic storage box with a hole cut out. It’s really handy as it allows multiple hedgehogs to use it per night, it’s really easy to clean, and I can sit on my porch and watch the hedgehogs eat. I decided to keep their bowl of water outside as they tend to be messy, as the food gets everywhere (they root through the dried food trying to get the best bits, and spill it all over the place) and having the water outside means the food doesn’t get wet.
The house is in a more sheltered spot, and I put loads of brash on it, so it looks like a brash pile with an entrance, to resemble what there homes would look like if they made them themselves.
I did have a hedgehog sleep there for about 3 or 4 nights, he left it one night and another hedgehog took over, I’ve called him Klepto (after Kleptomania), and two nights after that, the original hedgehog who claimed it first, Huffy, did keep sticking his nose in the entrance, and Klepto would come out and biff him. Klepto stayed in the house for around 3 or 4 nights and then vacated.
If a hedgehog home has no food in it, if they use it they are likely to use it as a home, if it’s got food in it, they might just use it as a restaurant they like to visit each night – and the restaurant can get very busy if you live in an area where there’s quite a few hedgehogs.
I don’t know how many hedgehogs I’ve got, but I think it’s over 6 that come to the restaurant each night.
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