Hi Nic
Hog houses cleaned out but didn’t find any hidden hogs but i double checked to make sure they were unused first.
These hogs are quite industrious as the material I took out of the one that was used was quite impressive in quantity. I put some straw and leaves in there to get things started but the amount of additional leaves the hog had brought in showed it had put quite some effort in to the process.
I also found several small twigs intertwined amongst the leaves which the hog must have dragged in as these were nothing to do with me and not what i would have expected to be part of the bedding (however I had seen sticks protruding from the entrance so this wasn’t a complete surprise just the number I found).
I was please to find it was very dry inside (the bubble wrap roof lining I incorporated in my home made hog house roof seems to be doing a great job) and also there was a shallow depression in the earth floor (similar to the scrapes ground nesting birds make to form their nest). This may have just have occurred naturally by the hog hunkering down to snooze or maybe the hog excavated it himself – would be really good to hear peoples thoughts on this?
Picking up on your advice Nic I have only put back a layer of straw over the earth floor and added some leaves but have left plenty of leaves in the vicinity just in case the hog does come back as you had mentioned they do move house even during hibernation.
I hope your hoglet is doing well and it chose your feeding box to hibernate.
