Hi Karolee
Really pleased to hear that you have two hedgehogs there! Great that they approved of your new hog house.
You may be right that it is mother and hoglet, but we do sometimes hear on the Forum about hogs sharing hog houses and I had two sharing in the run up to hibernation a couple of years back. Like with you, one did all the work and the other just moved in too. Only thing was that they were two big males! Even more surprising when there wasn’t a huge amount of space in there – it had previously been used as a feeding box.
They came out every night – sometimes one went back in first and sometimes the other – until eventually only one was coming out. I’m not sure whether they, or both of them, actually started hibernating in there – cameras are not reliable enough to always catch a hog entering or exiting – but they certainly didn’t spend the whole winter in there. But, hogs often change hibernation nests at some stage during hibernation time.
It may be that we are hearing more about this sort of thing because of a shortage of potential nesting sites. It isn’t ideal, as I imagine in a hog box, one hog could potentially trap another hog in, if the space is limited – if, for instance, the one nearest the entrance was in hibernation and the other wanted to get out. In a natural nest the hog behind could dig itself out, but not so easy through i.e. wood. So you might like to try to get another hog house, if possible, so they have a choice. Although, having said that, the ones here had a potential alternative and didn’t (at least initially) use it.
Another possibility is that now so many of us have cameras we are just noticing this sort of thing and that occasional sharing may have been happening previously without us knowing about it. Good hog hibernation nests are very intricate and take a lot of work for the hogs, so maybe some hogs just decide to take advantage of another hogs good work. Females, especially, having just raised hoglets – which takes a huge amount of energy for them – may welcome a ready made hog nest. But that is all supposition. We may never know. It may remain one of the many hedgehog mysteries!
Let us know how they get on. Good luck.
