Building a hedgehog house: simple instructions to follow

Build a hedgehog house
This is how you build a shelter for prickly visitors ?

Hedgehogs need winter quarters from November onwards. With a homemade hedgehog house you can provide them with shelter for the cold season. We’ll show you how to do this here.

The food supply for hedgehogs is limited in autumn and winter, to compensate for this they stop from November to March Hibernation. In addition to fat reserves, a hedgehog needs a place to spend the winter. A nest made of brushwood and leaves serves as a natural shelter for the hedgehogs in winter. You also have the opportunity to create a winter quarters for the hedgehogs in your garden: a homemade hedgehog house made of wood or a quarters made of bricks. We have picked out two methods for construction for you!

Build a hedgehog house out of wood

You can buy ready-made hedgehog house kits or get the parts yourself. The house ideally has a small, separate room in which the… Hedgehogs are protected from intruders such as cats. The “Hedgehogs in Bavaria” project by the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation and the State Association for Bird Protection in Bavaria e. V. has created building instructions for a hedgehog winter house. For this you need the following parts:

The wood should be 2 centimeters thick! The hedgehog house is higher at the front than at the back, so the wooden parts of the side walls and the partition wall have different heights. And this is how it is built:

On the “Hedgehog in Bavaria” project page You can also download the instructions as a PDF. If you don’t have the opportunity to saw the wooden parts to size yourself, many hardware stores offer to cut wood to size as desired.

Build a hedgehog house out of stones

An alternative to a wooden shelter is a hedgehog house made of stones. For this you need Bricks and a wooden panel, which serves as a roof for the house. To ensure that the roof sits securely, you should weigh it down with stones.

The house doesn’t have to be particularly high; two or three bricks stacked on top of each other are enough. Create an interior space of around 30×30 cm or 30×40 cm and it is best to install a partition wall, like in the wooden house, and leave a gap at the front for the entrance. This is what the stone house could look like:

Whether made of wood or stones: place the hedgehog house anywhere dry and quiet location (e.g. on a hedge), cover the floor of the house with leaves (or straw) so that the hibernators feel comfortable there.

Reading tip: Here we explain what you can do if you have found a hedgehog.

Have you ever thought about a worm bin in the apartment or an insect hotel in the garden? You can compost in the house with a worm box and what an insect hotel is useful for and how you can build it yourself, we’ll show you here: Build your own insect hotel.

Bridget