Hedgehog Houses

[skyreburn]

My medium-sized town garden is very popular with hedgehogs. It’s a walled garden, so square shaped with flower borders on three sides. Probably about 50m x 50m. There are two hedgehog entrances.

I use trail cams to follow the hedgehog activities and have two adults, three early-born-this-summer hedgehogs that I can identify as individuals and three juveniles from late litters who all look pretty much the same. (I only know there are three because they’ve appeared on the camera together.) The two adults went into hibernation 16 September and one of them, I know, is hibernating in my compost area, which is one corner of the square-shaped garden. I put a hedgehog house in one of the opposite corners. It was almost immediately occupied by one of the early-this-summer hogs and he has gone into hibernation in the last week. Someone suggested I could probably put another hedgehog house in the other corner and I did this two days ago. In less than 24 hours, one of the juveniles claimed it and spent much the night bringing in leaves. Then on last night’s camera, a second juvenile showed up and there were repeated tussles between the two over who should have it.

My question: would it be wise to put a third house out? If so how far apart do they need to be? And how private? At the moment it is pretty leafy in the borders but the leaves will fall so and while the environment is naturally protected from the weather because of the high walls, the garden isn’t very secluded once the bushes are bare.

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