Alice White
#16 Keeping a hedgehog at home is easy.
The houses of the hedgehog must be assigned to a decent dwelling - a spacious wooden or metal cage with a pallet. There should always be fresh sawdust or straw in the cage, as well as bowls of food and water.
Be careful when letting the hedgehog walk around the apartment: the pet can get tangled in the wires, hurt or chew on your things. The hedgehog cage should be cleaned of dirt daily to avoid unpleasant odors. Hedgehogs are loners, so if you keep 2 or more house hedgehogs at home, it is better to allocate 2 different cells for them. Also, do not forget that the hedgehog is a nocturnal animal, so it is at night that the house hedgehog will rustle, puff, snort, and go about his business.
#17 How to feed a hedgehog at home?
The basis of the food for a domestic hedgehog should be raw, lean, chopped meat, boiled liver, and fresh fish. As a delicacy, you can offer hedgehog bloodworms, mealworms, crickets, cockroaches. You can also feed your pet hedgehog with apples and carrots. Many people wonder if milk is possible for hedgehogs. In fact, you cannot feed your pet milk, as hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, and milk can not only cause indigestion in the animal but also lead to its death. It is also not recommended to offer the house hedgehog earthworms, snails, slugs, and cockroaches caught in nature, as they can be infected with parasites and lead to hedgehog disease.
#18 When do hedgehogs hibernate?
The most important thing that the future owner of a thorny pet should know about: even in captivity, a domestic hedgehog needs hibernation, albeit not as long as in natural conditions. Otherwise, the animal may die by spring. True, this does not apply to African pygmy hedgehogs, which do not hibernate. In autumn, the hedgehog needs to be fed intensively, since it is during this period that hedgehogs accumulate fat reserves.
In late October - early November, the animal will experience a period of numbness and lethargy, which means the beginning of hibernation. Usually, in nature, hedgehogs winter in their nest, so the animal needs to be allocated a secluded place where the temperature does not exceed 5 degrees Celsius: in the loggia, attic, in the shed. In the warmth, the hedgehog may not hibernate. You need to put dry leaves, sawdust, straw, rags in the nest of a house hedgehog. And then you can define your pet there.
