Hi jackietb
There’s nothing to stop you converting the storage box and see what happens – that is if you no longer need it as a storage box! I would be inclined not to put the other boxes in there. Also then the hogs would have more options, if I’ve understood it right.
The thing to remember about hog houses is that to the hogs they are just structures within which they can build their hibernating nests. If they were building their nest outside, the only waterproofing would be from the nest itself. They build very intricate nests, where the leaves are sort of layered (a bit like tiles) so that in the final ‘chamber’ for the hog it would be waterproof as well as insulated to just the right amount – the hogs seem to know how to achieve this instinctively.
Make sure you leave loads of nest building material around. So, medium sized leaves, grasses, etc. They probably use far more than most of us would imagine. i.e. they would fill a whole hog house with the leaves closely layerd. When I rake the leaves off the lawn, I rake them into the borders, so that the hogs can pick them up from there.
Re. the cleaning of the houses, October is one of the recommended times, but you really need to wait until they are vacated, so I would leave them alone until no-one is in residence. Just bear in mind that there is a gap between images on the cameras, so that if one just went in to investigate, it could potentially come back out again in that time gap and vice versa.
Good luck. It will be interesting to know if the hogs take to a whole terrace of hog houses!
