Hi Starwarsfan
Having more hog houses always has to be a good thing. One of the problems hogs face is insufficient suitable sites for nesting. So if you are thinking about getting a hog house, I would go ahead and get one. A hog may not move in straight away – some won’t until the hog house becomes another part of the local scenery – but you can encourage them by putting in a handful of nesting material (medium sized leaves, grasses, etc.) and leaving more nearby. The availability of nesting material is as important as the hog house. A hog house is only a structure within which a hog can build its nest.
Although a male hog just spending the night may not use much material in the warmer weather, a female making a birthing nest will probably use more and for hibernation all hogs need quite a lot of nest building material to build a suitable hibernaculum.
At this time of year, the males, who have larger ranges than the females, might not even return to the same nest every night. I suspect some, at least, might just bed down in the nearest suitable place to where they find themselves at the end of the night – which has on several occasions been in one of my feeding boxes!
Re. the siting – it’s hard to give any sensible advice without knowing the precise situation there. If you think the overgrown corner is a place where a hog might built a natural nest, I might be inclined to try to site the hog house in another suitable site, to increase the choice – especially if there is more than one hog around (which there usually are – if there is one hog around there are likely to be others in the area). But it really depends what sort of overgrown it is.
Hogs do change nests from time to time – they don’t normally take up permanent residence – but if you clean the house out between ‘tenancies’ it will be available again as a new potential nest site for a hog (the same one or another).
There is some more information in this link: https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/help-hedgehogs/hedgehog-homes/
Good luck and happy hog watching!
