Hedgehog Care Tips and Main Food Introduction

The hedgehog is also called the hedgehog ball, hedgehog rat, melon-stealing badger, spiny one, and so on. Apart from its belly, which is soft, its whole body is covered in stiff spines. If it encounters danger, it will curl its body up to protect itself. So what are the care tips for keeping hedgehogs? What does it generally eat as its main food?

1. What are the care tips for keeping hedgehogs?

1. Hedgehogs are very timid, and getting familiar with them takes skill

Hedgehogs are naturally timid and irritable, and easily stressed. When it keeps huffing and curls into a ball, how do you plan to interact with it? All you can do is wait, wait for it to slowly loosen up. How long this takes, no one can say for sure; a day, a week, or more than a month are all possible. Even once familiar, a hedgehog's friendliness is still limited. Keeping a creature covered in spines, you cannot expect never to be pricked; that is impossible. Some hedgehogs will even bite when they throw a tantrum.

2. Training to toilet in a fixed spot is not easy

Hedgehogs are animals that can be trained to toilet in a fixed spot, but it requires patience and finding the right method. At first you may have to wipe up droppings all over the house every day, which takes great patience. Practice shows that hedgehogs are picky about litter sand, and choosing the right litter sand is the key first step; you can only keep trying. Before that, the poop-scooping owner has to pick up droppings and wipe up urine every day, then keep searching for a suitable method to teach the hedgehog to toilet in a fixed spot.

3. Hedgehogs are solitary animals and need a relatively large space

Hedgehogs are solitary animals in the wild, so you must never have the idea of “finding it a companion”; hedgehogs are even injured during mating. If you keep more than one, you must keep them separated, and they must never be kept in connected spaces. Needless to say, they also cannot live together with other pets, as they will harm each other. In addition, a hedgehog walks an average of 3~5 km every night, and needs 5.5 hours of exercise every day to be healthy, so please consider whether your home has enough space for it to move around.

4. Hedgehogs are nocturnal animals and will affect your sleep

Being nocturnal is one of a hedgehog's natural traits. Hedgehogs usually start moving after the lights are turned off, and they are very active. Pushing the house, pushing the toilet pan, scratching here and there, and so on. And a hedgehog's activity makes a lot of noise. Being woken up in the middle of the night by the noise of a hedgehog's activity is common. This is a natural trait that cannot be changed; if you cannot accept it, do not keep one.

2. What does a hedgehog generally eat as its main food?

Hedgehogs feed on insects and worms. Their favorite foods are ants and termites, and they also eat young birds, bird eggs, frogs, lizards, and so on, and occasionally crops. They can eat 200 grams of insects in one night, eliminating pests and thus benefiting agriculture. Hedgehogs also eat plant matter such as grass roots, melons and fruits, and vegetables.

So what do hedgehogs kept as pets eat?

1. Hybrid hedgehogs kept at home can be fed a self-mixed feed, combining meat scraps, grains and their by-products, green vegetables, and so on in proportion.

2. Small animals such as caterpillars, beetles, snails, and earthworms, as well as fruits, can also be fed.

3. Hedgehogs are sensitive to lactose, so dairy products must not be fed.