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Please read the above pet food ingredient link.

General Care of Hedgehogs:

Hedgehogs make great pets and can be a wonderful learning experience for children. Hedgehogs are "exotic" pets and are not native to North America. Being unique, they require special care and differ from a cat, dog, gerbil, hamster and other domesticated animals. They may live up to and beyond 7 years of age depending on the diet you feed them and the care you give them. Poor diet and lack of exercise means early death! Please do not treat the diet of a hedgehog lightly! If cared for properly your pet and you will have happy long years together.

Housing:

Hedgehogs need a minimum of two square feet per animal. This doesn’t mean two square feet will make a hedgie happy, however. I recommend a clear 56 quart Sterlite container which is convenient, easy to clean, roomy, and non hazardous to your new friend and will be fine for your new baby for awhile. Opposite sex hedgehogs must, of course, be housed separately and under no circumstances do you house two males together because they will fight to the death. Not a great thing to have your children find! For my hedgies I house them in 90 quart clear Sterlite containers which allows the use of a large 12" solid wheel, Rody Igloo by Lixit, a food dish, and some toys. A water bottle in a guard will easily hang over the edge of the container to water your animal. This is a great set-up and I have found there is absolutely no reason to go more elaborate or more expensive.

Bedding:

I have used regular Carefresh (which smells bad to me once soiled), white Carefresh (which smells somewhat better than the regular), Aspen, Total Comfort by Kaytee (which is cheaper than Carefresh and can be purchased at Walmart Supercenters), and my favorite; Soft-Sorbent by Kaytee. It is better smelling than most beddings, is highly absorbent, contains no aromatic oils (which are dangerous to hedgehogs!), is a great odor control product, is earth friendly and is appropriate for all small animals and birds. It is also sanitized to aid in bacteria control, is safe to flush, made from reclaimed resources and is an excellent compost or mulch in the garden or flower beds! I use it for this purpose myself. However, if your hedgie is highly active the Soft-Sorbent will quickly be pulvurized to dust, literally. I use Aspen when there are babies and for highly active hedgies. The problem with Aspen or unscented pine shavings is the possibility of becoming infested with mites which can kill your hedgehog if left untreated! However, some mites are completely normal and I have not noticed any problems with using Aspen.

Exercise:

At the beginning, your baby will not necessarily have to have a wheel. With a low fat diet and lots of handling (this means allowing the hedgie to explore while under your supervision) your hedgehog will get plenty of exercise. Eventually, your pet will need a wheel. Especially if your hedgehog is as active at night as our female hedgies are! Our boy is not that active, but when given a wheel he will go all night. Hedgehogs can walk/run up to 5-7 miles a night! A solid wheel is the best and safest. If you use a wheel with wire rungs you will have to duck tape both the inside and outside of the wheel. It is much cleaner and safer for your animal to use a solid wheel though. When grown, your hedgie will need a 12" sized solid wheel. You may wish to go ahead and purchase a 12" wheel to save money or else you will have a small fortune in different sized wheels and your baby will grow out of them all except the 12" one.

Toys:

Hedgies need lots of exercise and this is where the solid wheel, that has no open parts that allow for broken feet and legs and other injuries, and toys come into play. You can also purchase a critter ball to allow your pet to safely roam your home. Toys with bells, like cat toys, are great as well as things like toilet paper rolls (cut down the length so the hedgie doesn't get a head caught inside it), plastic toy cars, light weight stuffed animals, feed dish, and numerous other things like wadded up paper (only soy based dyes please!) Hedgehogs like brightly colored toys and enjoy rooting and pushing them around their container.

Diet:

Hedgehogs eat a variety of foods in the wild and are classified as insectivores, but are actually omnivores. It is very important to feed your hedgie a quality food that is low in fat (6-14%), high in protein (30%) and high in fiber as well. I do not really recommend hedgehog food due to its mediocre to poor quality. If you chose to feed them hedgehog food please mix it with other cat/dog food. DO NOT FEED VITAKRAFT HEDGEHOG FOOD! Your pet will starve to death on this junk! Do not feed peanuts and anything else that can get stuck in the roof of its mouth. What is good to feed them? Quality (high) and semi-quality (medium) grade cat food and dog foods. I have done some research and have come up with the following, although my research is still ongoing. Wellness, Chicken Soup for the Cat (or Dog) Lover's Soul, Blue Buffalo Lite for dogs, Spa Select Lite for cats, Natural Balance and I'm sure there are a few more out there. What do I feed mine? Well, for the first 6-8 months I fed them what the breeder told me to feed them but stopped once I realized she was WRONG! Dog and cat foods like 9 Lives, Friskies, Meow Mid, Pretty Pets, Science Diet, Special Dinners, Special Kitty, Whiskas, Iams and the list goes on, are NOT good for your hedgie. Mazuri Omnivore and Insectivore foods are supposedly good but contains BHA! Read on... What you need to look out for: Artificial fillers, preservatives, BHA, BHT, Ethoxquin (studies have linked artificial fillers and preservatives in pet foods to cancers, ear infections, respiratory infections, joint problems, and a host of other health and wellness problems), sweetners such as corn syrup, sucrose, propylene glycol (which is used in some chewy foods to keep them moist and in large amounts can be toxic!) Lite or diet cat/dog foods are the best all around and should contain meat in the top 5 ingredients. This means either whole, fresh meats or single-source meat meal (i.e. chicken meal rather than poultry meal) and should not contain meat by-products. Do you know what meat by-products are? Meat by-products are stuff like beaks/bills, feet, snout, pig tails...you get the drift. Amazing how many meat by-products are in supposed human-grade food like bologna, hot dogs, and so on. Check the label! And a word about corn and corn products; hedgehogs do not digest this filler and what do you think is in most cat and dog food? Corn and corn products like corn gluten meal. Whatever you feed your pet hedgehog, it will be low in fiber. This means you will have to supplement their diet with fiber. To do this you can feed them crickets, mealworms, wax worms, grape nuts cereal, bran flakes and so forth. If you feed them mealworms, only feed them a maximum of 3-4 per day as they're high in fat and so are wax worms! Crickets are much lower in fat and very healthy. What else do hedgies eat? They eat veggies and fruits. Never feed hedgehogs chocolate, human junk food, any type of nuts, bird seed, onions, etc. I feed my hedgehogs a mixture of cat and dog foods and sometimes the mix differs. Natural Balance dog and Natural Balance Lite for cats, Purina Kitten Chow, Purina One cat food, Purina Naturals cat chow, Natural Choice Small Bites (dog), Lambert, and The Goodlife Recipe food for cats are pet foods I have used.

Why such a huge section on diet? Because I'm trying to impress how important diet is where hedgehogs are concerned. Too much fat in their diet causes fatty liver disease and it comes upon them quickly and is deadly. If you have any questions regarding diet please email me! With all the talk about food it's now time to mention water. Water bowls can be used, but we use water bottles which guarantees our pets always have clean water aplenty. 8-oz "hamster" bottles are great, but we have found that 16-oz "guinea pig" bottles are better. We only use this size now and they are perfectly fine for babies! All of our babies wean using these 16-oz water bottles!

Update: I have updated my hedgie food mixture to the following: Nature Organics: Chicken Formula For Cats (32% protein and 12% fat) and Science Diet has a great new food out called Nature's Best Adult Dog Small Bites: Chicken & Brown Rice Dinner (21.5 % protein and 12.5 % fat). These two are really good and my hedgies, even the babies, like them both and clean their bowls. I also incorporate Flint River Cat and Kitten food (for my lactating mothers and babies) into the food mixture as well. They love it and Flint River has never had a pet food recall! Very nutritious and no bad stuff! If you're interested in purchasing this food please contact me for more info.

Handling Your Hedgie:

Your hedgehog should be handled every day, preferably at night when they are active. They are nocturnal which means they sleep during the day and are active during the night. If you don't hold your pet often it will start getting prickly and will hiss at you. So, lap time is a must. How do you pick something up that is curled tightly into a ball and has sharp needle-like quills? Very carefully. "laugh." A rag, such as a dish towel or washcloth, will work or, once you get used to their quills, you can carefully pick them up like I do. Once you have picked up your pet, he or she will love to crawl and play all over you! However you choose to spend time with your hedgie, always supervise and make sure they're safe.

Hedgehogs And Hygiene:

You are the best judge of when your hedgehog's cage needs cleaning. Dirty cages smell. They also look unsightly. This means they'll need to be spot cleaned every day and may need more in-depth cleaning weekly from top to bottom. I clean out any soiled sections (called spot cleaning) daily and clean out the containers when they need it. Believe me, you'll know when this needs to be done. The diet you feed your hedgie plays a huge part in how smelly and yucky it will be. Do not feed earthworms or you will have a runny foul smelling cage to deal with, although some vets will recommend them! When you feed your hedgehog indigestible food like corn products, it just passes through them and out which means more to clean up! So, feed your pet a mixture of high quality and medium quality cat and dog foods and you should see small amounts of poo which makes your hedgie happy and ultimately, YOU happy.

There are times when your pet will need a bath either because it smells due to annointing with something smelly, or they get too many mites or they get fleas. If you do not have other animals in the house and don't take your hedgie outside then you cut down dramatically on your hedgehog getting any fleas. Mites can occur from bedding and from transferring from one animal to another either by other animals or from you! A mild kitten-safe or puppy-safe flea shampoo and a toothbrush will help in this regard, but for normal bathing use a mild soap like Johnson's baby shampoo. Fill your tub or sink with warm water that comes up to his or her tummy or comes just up to the beginning of the quills around the tummy. Put some soap on your hands and rub your pet down gently with it and then use the toothbrush to gently scrub his quills, tummy and feet. Don't be surprised if your hedgie starts to swim! If your hedgie gets fleas, ticks, or mites use a mild cat flea/tick spray with Pyrethrin, which is a natural insect repellent, and bathe him/her in a kitten-safe flea shampoo. With both of these products make sure to stay away from their head/face. You can also take your little one to a licensed vet where he/she can give them a series of shots, which ranges from 2-3 shots depending on how bad an infestation your pet has. This is the most effective method, I hear, because it kills the mites on the head/face. BUT, I have also heard conflicting things about this. I prefer to handle this problem myself. Remember to thoroughly clean and sterilize your container/cage before placing your pet back inside or all will be for naught! This includes the wheel, bowl and all toys. You can soak them in a mild bleach solution and then rinse throroughly. If you regularly bathe your hedgehog and clean their dwelling thoroughly before placing him/her back inside it, you will keep the mites down dramatically if not get rid of them all together. After you bathe your hedgie make sure you dry your pet with towels and keep them in a warm place so they do not catch a chill.

After bathing, this is the perfect time to trim their nails. Just wait until a foot drops down between your fingers and, while holding it firmly between your fingers, trim the nails on that foot. Be careful though! You don't want to cause your hedgie to bleed. Regular nail clippers are what I use and I notice that I never have to clip the nails on my hedgehogs front feet since they naturally seem to wear down.

If In Doubt...

If you have any doubts in how to take care of your new pet please contact me ASAP either by phone or email. NO question is a dumb question and no concern should be discounted.