New house
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How happy am i , seen my first 2 hogs for this year. I have 2 hog houses one is old and one is new. I had put a little straw inside both of them, and a hog came along and moved all the straw out from the old house into the new one it did make me laugh obviously wanted a new build. It is asleep in new house at last and saw another bigger hog visit but soon came out, its only a one bedroomed house .
That’s awesome.
They can be funny, we saw ours trying to take a twig into the hut last year. The twig was wider than the doorway. It took her a few attempts but it had us in stitches as she bounced off the entrance 😂
How can I encourage a hog into our house. I got the house at the end of the summer last year as we had 3 regular visitors to the garden (to eat and drink). They would often eat, pop in for a snooze but they are always gone by the morning, any ideas how we can try and encourage them to stay. Should I be placing leaves etc in the house to make it appealing or let them do that?
Hi Jacquiseall82
You could try putting a handful of leaves into the hog house to give them the idea – although it sounds as if they already have the right idea if they have been going into the box for naps. But hogs tend to prefer doing their own interior decorations, so it’s best just to put in a small amount of potential bedding and leave more of it in the vicinity for the hogs to find for themselves. If it definitely has no residents, I would give it a good clean out https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/cleaning-out-boxes/ to get rid of any potential parasite eggs and then put in a handful of leaves.
It can sometimes take a while for hogs to accept new boxes, so you are lucky they have been using it at all. But maybe later on a female might decide to use it for a birthing nest, or maybe in the Autumn a hog might decide to use it for hibernation.
Not all hog houses are used all of the time. But at least it gives them a choice if one is there. Most of the hogs around earlier in the year are likely to be males (they tend to come out of hibernation earlier than females) and males may only sleep in a hog house short term, especially if it’s warmer when they might bed down for the day under a bush or hedge (which is what they would have had to do before hog houses were invented).
Good luck, just be patient and you may get a longer term tenant. Meanwhile, happy hog watching!
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