So a lot of people have been asking me questions about how I keep my hedgehog, are they easy pets to keep, and what do hedgehogs eat? So besides some of the basic stuff that I've posted about, like how does bath time work and where does Sticky live, here is some stuff that I maybe haven't talked about yet.
Well first of all, hedgehogs are actually Omnivores. Most people are pretty shocked when I tell them this. No, they don't eat veggies and seeds. They eat meat. In the wild, they actually even eat pythons. Fun fact.
Anyway, so this is what Sticky eats:
I have 2 different kinds of cat foods: Natural Balance Green Pea and Chicken and Chicken Soup Light. I basically mix the two together and give her a little scoop of it. This small ziploc was given to me by the breeders. That shot is basically the measuring spoon and the bag will last about a week. That's what's left of it... originally I was feeding her a heaping cup full but now I've reduced it to just shy of full. Why? It's because the bag is ball parked to last 3 weeks but I kind of was feeding Sticky a bit much and was scared she was becoming pudgy because I was on track to have the bag finished for her in two weeks. Whoops.
Anyway, hedgehogs are also not the easiest pet to care for. By that, I mean that they are not as low maintenance as cats are. I have to clean her wheel (as posted earlier, she poops quite regularly and quite disgustingly) at least twice a day. It's recommended that you clean the wheel every day but I find that if I don't clean it twice a day at least, it gets pretty nasty.
This is my mini cleaning station. I use the mini ice cream cup to scoop up the occasional mess that's made in the cage. Sticky is pretty potty trained though at this point. She mainly just poops and pees in the wheel... but when her pee kind of trickles out, the shavings need to be dumped (basic physics, she pees then runs in the wheel - pretty gross but fact of life). I've been recently lining the underside of the wheel with newspaper though so that I can save the shavings and just dump the newspaper instead. I thought it was pretty genius if I do say so myself.
The spoon is to, truthfully, scrape the caked on poop that sometimes gets trampled on and dried onto the side of the wheel. The spoon is also used to scoop the occasional single pieces of stool that she leaves (seriously, sometimes she walks into the wheel, poops, then leaves). Gladful to have a potty trained hedgehog that's so young, but why can't she use the litter box?
Anyway, the gloves are pretty self-explanatory... when I used to horseback ride, I had no problem mucking out stalls without gloves or even picking out hooves and accidentally touching poop or whatever, but when you have a meat eater whom you occasionally give small pieces of cooked chicken to, I do not want to be touching this poop. I definitely prefer the smell of horse poop. Also, the urine is a whole 'nother ball park so I definitely prefer having gloves on when dealing with that.
Like my mother, however, I am allergic to the latex of the gloves so I've had to use plastic glove liners. Why not just the plastic gloves then, you ask? Well damn the thicker the layer between the poop and I, the better.
Moving on. What many people don't know is that Sticky is an African pygmy hedgehog. She needs to be in a warm climate, so this is how we do it. We actually have the bathroom temperature set at around 23-25 degrees at all times. We do this through the thermostat and we have the digital thermometre to ensure all is well.
Okay so that's kind of a small-ish run down of hedgehog ownership!
(Oh, and here's a sneeze caught on camera)
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