Shall we clean our Hedgehog House?
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We are fortunate to have hedgehog/hedgehogs in our garden, they eat the food from the feeding station every night. We also have a wooden sleeping house for them and they are using that often. We opened the lid very quickly yesterday and it’s full of leaves and hay (that we left out last autumn) it all looked clean and dry but we didn’t want to poke around to see if anything was in residence. Do we clean this out now? We did do this last Spring and sadly found a dead hedgehog in there. As they are using it fairly regularly now, viewed on our camera, do we clean or leave it? I’m sure they wouldn’t use it if we had another dead one in there would they? I have read various reports on cleaning so now confused!!
Hi Dollydream
This is the Hedgehog Street information re. hog house cleaning: https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/cleaning-out-boxes/
So in theory, now is a good time to clean out the boxes. It may look clean, but there could be parasites or their eggs in there if the bedding has been there for a while. It’s possible the hogs are just using the house for naps between snacks, so there may not be one in there during the day, but I would explore gently first, in case there is. If there is, leave it be and try another day.
It does seem unlikely a hog would use a box with a dead hog in it, but I suppose it may depend on whether a dead hog had stopped smelling. Hogs are not known for always being predictable! But hopefully there won’t be another dead one in there this year.
Good luck, I hope you get a chance to clean out the hog house. Also that you continue to enjoy the visits of all the hogs. Happy hog watchcing!
On this subject, I just opened my Hoghouse lid to discover it packed with leaves and straw, so was clearly in use during the winter. I gave it a clean out so wasn’t sure whether to completely re-pack given the warmer weather. So I put a reasonable sprinkling of hay in. Will that be enough?
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