thanks for the info.

anyone who has tried this product? their pets, i mean. RM25 for a 800g pack is quite reasonable, but not sure if my hedgehogs will take them considering a couple of mine are quite picky with their food.

well, at current retail price i guess no harm in getting a pack for testing, i'll probably buy this weekend and see how my hedgehogs choose.

i've got the ultra-blend hedgehog diet last weekend and fed my hedgehogs with it last night.

they were a little picky at first, they finished all the RC kibbles and left the ultra-blend kibbles in the bowl. but i guess they couldn't stand the hunger because later around midnight they started eating the remaining kibbles as well.

not bad, at least they won't rather starve than eating unfamiliar kibbles like last time. not as 'solid' as RC kibbles, i believe it's easier for consumption. and a couple of hoglets went to have a lick and bite on the ultra-blend crumbs too.

i have photos of the hoglets several hours after birth, but like empty_reg i didn't want to disturb the mother and risk the lives of the hoglets.

the photo below is taken approximately 5-6 hours after birth, and the quills are already visible.



however, both times my female hedgehog gave birth she didn't leave any stains of blood in the hidebox. the second time is understandable as i'm using a open-bottom hidebox with woodshavings so the blood could've been absorbed, but the first time it gave birth in an ice-cream box and i didn't see any blood either.

by the way, echoing on the issue of bacteria, all animals carry them, not just hedgehogs. it's just how you clean up after that which matters. i'm sure most people wash their hands after handling their dogs or cats as well, so hedgehogs are no exception. but do notice that some people do get rashes after handling hedgehogs, it could be an allergic reaction but so far there has no proven facts to support this statement.

i remember reading something about the annointing part which explains the self defence mechanism (or toxic quills), although i don't remember clearly every detail but i can roughly describe it.

hedgehog has an immunity to certain poisons from animals in the wild and they will lick and self-annoint these 'smells' on their quills to act as a self defence mechanism to prevent predators from hunting and eating them. if i got it correct it's snake poison, but i don't remember whether there's others.

but then again, that is just a theory. do take note that in some other countries hedgehogs live in the wild and probably that's why people assume self-annointing is a self defence mechanism. in our country hedgehogs are domesticated and never lived in the wild, and yet self-annointing is something that they do even though they've lived in your cage their entire lives.

i personally believe that hedgehogs annoint because they want to keep the scent of the item they licked, and to familiarize themselves with. my hedgehogs usually will self-annoint themselves with scents from things they always approach such as the towel and the hidebox. but that's just my opinion.

recently petshack carries a new hedgehog food called ultra blend hedgehog diet, i would recommend it as well for your hedgehogs, although i believe if you put the kibbles together with any RC kibbles, the hedgehogs usually finish up the RC first.

slightly higher in price about RM20+ but it's a 600g pack, so in the average i guess the price is about the same since RC's small packs are 400g.

you're talking about ultra blend? so far i only come across sunway's petshack who's carrying this product.

in any case, i'd always advise to mix instead of feeding one type of food only to your hedgehog. it's just to be safe, you never know if a certain brand of hedgehog food suddenly gets a cut in supply when you're running out of it. although unlikely, but that's just a suggestion.

i still remember i was feeding my hedgehog RC34kitten back then when suddenly all petstores don't carry this product anymore. i was scampering around looking for a 400g pack but couldn't get any, and in the end i had to change to RC32, and the hedgehog was somewhat picky and wasn't eating a lot when i changed the diet all of a sudden. 34kitten has since been changed to RC36kitten if i've not mistaken.

right now, i mix three types of food; ultra blend, RC34 babycat and RC32 fit.

i think it was still under 6 months old when that happened.

you can mix with either, depending on which one you're feeding your hedgehog. the ultra blend has the most suitable diet for hedgehogs, and i bought it because it has very low fat % compared to any other catfood.

but i believe it'll take some time before your hedgehog eats ultrablend kibbles. my hedgehogs are still a little fussy, they'll finish up all the 34babycat first, followed by 32fit, and over the night if they're still hungry then only they finish up the ultra blend kibbles.

combination of the two should be able to last you about 2 months or so, if i remember correctly. i recall a pack of 400g last for about a month only. now i buy the larger packs as well because of the number of hedgehogs i have, so my estimation may be flawed, and also because i'm feeding three different types.

portion-wise, it's up to yourself really, i do not feed at a fixed ratio (no way i can measure so accurately, hahaha). if your hedgehog gets a little chubby then lower the ratio of the food that contains high fat %, and include a wheel.

different owners will tell you different answers because everyone's using different brands of food and different portions of serving. it's best that you feed and watch day by day how's your hedgehog's intake of food, and estimate from there.

This post has been edited by livingmonolith: May 5 2009, 03:34 PM

yep, echo that.

try to get a airtight container if possible, even if you rewrap the bag it's not really good enough as the kibbles will still be exposed to air through the tiny gaps. unless your food pack has a sealer itself, but from what i recall only the larger RC packs have those seals.

hope you have plenty of fun with your hedgehog.

that's where you have to monitor daily for some time.

start with a portion you deem enough. if the bowl's empty the next day add a little more to your portion when feeding. again check the bowl the next morning. do this daily until you see there's leftover in the bowl, which means that the previous day's portion is almost the right portion for your hedgehog. do not mix the leftover with fresh kibbles.

again, it's hard to give you an exact portion to feed, just like us human we all eat different portion of food daily so we can't say it's standard for all hedgehogs. but for a starting indicator you can try anywhere around 1-2 tablespoons to be safe.

and from my experience, hedgehogs below 6 months usually consumes a little bit more than after 6 months. could be something to do with their metabolism during their 'teenage' years.

common for hedgehogs just brought home.

expect the same for the next couple of days before any improvements.

i feed once a day, at night approx. 8-9pm. i know some owners who feed twice, night and morning by halving the serving.

you may try handfeeding to allow it to bond with you, but i believe you'll grow tired of feeding it that way very soon, besides, you don't want to let it think that your hand is always associated with food.

i'm only put the food on the bowl daily, and occasionally when i pick my hedgehogs out i'll sometimes feed a kibble or two by hand.

i keep all my hedgehogs in toyogo boxes.

if i get zoozones for all my hedgehogs i'll go pk, hahaha...

anyway, i find toyogo boxes to be quite fitting, although the space is still a bit too small to my liking. but at least i'm able to fit in wheels, the hidebox, food and water bowls and occasionally some toys, tall enough that hedgehogs can't climb out, and within a reasonable budget. especially when wheels are so darn expensive.

we are considered quite newbies in having hedgehogs as pets. you'll never know if the locals here manage to get a platinum in the near future.

remember a former breeder here who enquired about importing pintos but the cost of transporting them over will cost thousands. maybe when it gets cheaper in the future and we'll be able to see other colours than the common algerians we have here, right now it's only like S&P, albino, cinnamon, champagne and snowflakes of these colours.

i was searching for a platinum back then as well, and bonai got me a snowflake with very few banded quills (several quills near the forehead), and until now i still couldn't reproduce its colour.



the left one is a snowflake, you can see the obvious difference in quills colour compared to the normal S&P (middle and right).

@aztoys,

the hedgehog's fine, they can adapt to normal room temperature or a little higher, but don't keep it in air-conditioned room which are too cold as they can go into hibernation mode, and that' not something you want to see.

btw, one month old, or one month since you got it from the seller? i assume it's the latter since the hoglet will still be feeding off the mother's milk and usually still not able to take solid kibbles yet.

@chinchillas,

that's what happens when the seller has no whatsoever knowledge of pets but only want the money the pets will make for them. i've seen in many petshops where they house both males and females together and trying to convince buyers that hedgehogs should be bought in pairs like hamsters (both are lies, if anyone's wondering).

and i don't dare to imagine what you actually saw there.

it's pretty obvious how well they know about hedgehogs before bringing in the stocks.

and still as bad, the petshop owner shouldn't house the hedgehogs together anyway even if the female is not pregnant, unless he intends to breed. worse still, the supplier who sold the hedgehogs to him doesn't seem like he has any ideas about hedgehog breeding either. i guess the petshop owner can't even tell how old are the 'stocks' when he brought them in.

and btw if you notice, usually the food bowl is always loaded with catfood (usually friskies or whiskas), most of the time left there for days and never replaced with fresh ones. i've seen once where a petstore owner only feed the hedgehog cabbages and informed me that it is hedgehog's staple food, where the hedgehog is looking very weak and having patches of baldspots.

yeah, never ever disturb hedgehogs in the morning, especially so if it's soundly sleeping.

i was having a major cleanup to make some alterations to my hedgehogs' homes yesterday so i had to wake them all up and relocate for a short time, and man, do they get really pissed.

my S&P refused to come out and eat during dinnertime after that.

i trust reanne will be giving you a good long talk during your pickup, so don't worry about it.

welcome to the hedgehog owners club!

i'll usually use a small pail when bathing my hedgehogs. they'll try to climb out of it, and it's much more easier for me to clean their quills when they're standing on two legs. but again, all hedgehogs have different characteristics, none of my hedgehogs ball up when bathing, one will lie motionless when i slowly dip it into the water, while another will wriggle non-stop.