How To Build A Hedgehog House? Make A Hedgehog House Step-By-Step Guide
Hedgehogs are among our most known and generally recognized wild creatures. As this wild animal is becoming incredibly rare, building a hedgehog house is necessary to provide a safe and warm space for a hedgehog to sleep, give birth, or hibernate.
Steps Of Building A Hedgehogs House
In this article, we’re going to see how to build a Hedgehog’s house so that you can make a perfect home for your picky pet.
Choose a Suitable Environment
Before building a house, any Hedgehog owner’s first query is, “What would be an appropriate site for a Hedgehog’s house to place?” Well, it was said that hibernating hedgehogs like peace and migrate following linear features such as hedges and fences.
So, the best place to put a hedgehog house out is a quiet, shaded position in your garden, which is ideally facing east to south. And where the entrance hole will be shielded from bad weather or predators.
Apart from providing shelter, you can also benefit by placing these prickly creatures’ houses in your garden because these hedgepigs are known for eating snails, slugs, and other unwelcome insects. That means they are great for your garden.
Gather All Materials
After selecting a suitable place for the Hedgehog’s house, it’s time to gather all the kinds of stuff you need to build a house. To make a wooden house, you need a large size of wooden wine crate and untreated timber, which should be 1.2m long, 15cm in length, and 2cm wide.
However, while selecting woods, we recommend using untreated wood for hedgehog homes because this pretreated wood can contain chromate copper arsenate compounds that are hazardous to many species. Apparently, it’s best to choose woods from certain softwood tree species, which are grown in the UK, such as larch, Douglas-fir, or red cedar. Due to their sustainable character, they can be the perfect option for exterior timbers. After selecting solid woods from suitable sources, you will need 25mm galvanized nails, a hosepipe 1m in length, a jigsaw, a drill, a hammer, and a 25mm drill bit.
Building The Blocks
Before moving on to the next part, it is essential to use gardening gloves to avoid receiving splinters from the wood in your hand. Moreover, after collecting all of the raw components, the first thing you need to do is make the tunnel, which is necessary for making an entrance to your hedgehog house.
To do this, cut your selected timber into four separate lengths, which should be 30cm long. Then nail these sustainable timbers together and from a suitable tunnel. In this case, this tunnel makes secure passages for this pet to avoid being hit by vehicles. It enables individual hedgehogs to travel safely between populations and habitats, which can be made of wood or bricks.
Furnish The Home
Next, drill a hole in a way to fit the hosepipe into the back of the crate. Here the hosepipe acts as a ventilation system for your hedgehog house, which also keeps hogs feeling cozy. While furnishing the house, make a hole near the top, where the hose needs to be present on the ground outside.
By doing so, air can easily pass inside the house. Furthermore, place the crate’s top but do not nail it shut. Because every year or two, you’ll need to take it off and clean up the house.
After making the tunnel, grab the wine crate and cut an entrance hole into one side of the crate at the base by using a jigsaw. The hole should be 11cm in length and 15cm wide. The base of the hole can be filled with dried leaves. Besides this, you can also use other materials such as twigs, bark, or anything else that may have fallen to the ground. After completing the entrance hole, attach this thing to the tunnel and nail it from the inside of the crate.
Put Other Accessories
Up next, you’ll need other necessary items to make the house more secure for your prickly visitors. Such as, to monitor its presence, you can simply put a scrunched-up piece of newspaper that won’t blow away but can be easily moved by hedgepigs. Or you can use a trail camera to keep an eye on the activity at the entrance of your hog home. Apart from this, you can also place a twig or bit of hay at the entrance. If this hasn’t moved by morning, the house may be empty or occupied by a hibernating hedgehog.
Additionally, once the house is fully occupied, stop checking it frequently. Because, by making this mistake, you might frighten a nesting mother and cause the young to be abandoned. Besides this, don’t put food and water inside the house. These hedgepigs don’t eat where they nest, so put them near the house. The best thing is to place it a little away from their home.
For inspecting and cleaning out the box, the best time is supposed to be April- after their hibernation period and before the Summer, which is their nesting period. Moreover, after washing the box with hot water, refill the box’s floor with hay. You can keep some hays around the nest so hedgehogs can use these things later for making their bedding.
Lastly, don’t treat the hedgehog houses with non-water-based preservatives or paint for a long time because they seem to be harmful to your pets. In this case, it’s best to use water-based preservatives, which should only be applied outside the box.
Alternative Options
If you’ve completed the previous steps, well done! You have successfully made your Hedgehog a new home. Now keep this beautiful house in a suitable corner of your garden. However, if you find it difficult to obtain solid wood for building a house or search for budget-friendly options, you could use a large paving slab or a number of brushwood instead of a sheet of solid wood for the roof.
Though brushwood tends to be a much cheaper version than solid wood options, they tend to degrade within a couple of years. So, in this case, you will need to spend more dollars on additional brushwood for making a hedgehog house. Another alternative for the house is a huge plastic box, but be sure to cut an entrance and lots of ventilation holes. After that, camouflage the box with logs and leaf litter in the same manner that we have previously mentioned.
Wrapping Up
Hedgehogs will be far more likely to reside in your garden if you provide them with secure living areas. Overall, these are all about How To Set Up a Hedgehog’s house, so do let us know how you made a house for your prickly friends.
