Hi LalaBlanca
Sorry to hear you haven’t had too good an experience with hedgehog carers in the Netherlands. the trouble is, with hogs it isn’t always an exact science. That applies to cleaning out the hog houses, too! Hogs will be hogs, as simbo65 has discovered, and don’t always do what we expect, or would like them to do!
First of all the reason why it is suggested hog boxes are cleaned is so that they can be used again, hopefully free of parasites. In the wild, the hogs would make natural nests, and be likely to desert the nest after use and so avoid being re-infested with parasites that way. There is some advice on when to clean out hog houses, which you may already have seen: https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/cleaning-out-boxes/
I expect you have seen that if you clean out the boxes you should not use chemicals but use boiling water to kill any parasite eggs which might be in the cracks.
Clearly the timing of that advice is not quite going to work for you. Also the timing may be a bit different in the Netherlands. It’s possible that you left it too late, and that the hog had only recently moved in. It is also possible that it could be a nesting female (obviously I don’t know the sizes – whether it might be a youngster, etc.) But in case it is a nesting mother, you need to leave the box alone. Mothers with very young ones can easily desert them, if disturbed, or apparently even eat them. The fact that the hog was out during the day, might also suggest a nursing mother. Unless it is an unwell hog, the most likely hog to be out during the day (for short amounts of time) is a female with young.
If it was me, I think I would try not to disturb the hog, just in case, but continue to leave something across the doorway, so that you know whether she has vacated the box. If you felt like making/purchasing another hog house, you could try locating it fairly nearby, in the hope that she decides to move in there (possibly with her young, if she has any). But it needs to be her decision. Even if it isn’t a nursing mother, you need to leave the hog until it decides to move out and then clean out the box. You say you don’t think there is a problem with parasites (i.e. fleas and ticks) so hopefully the hog will be o.k. without having the box cleaned out just yet. All we can hope is, that if it does gets too bad, the hog would decide to move out and then you can clean out the house ready for, hopefully, re-occupation.
Hope that helps a bit.
