A healthy hedgehog should feel warm to your touch or slightly warmer than your body temperature.
Be aware that overheating your hedgehog can cause blood clots to form in its circulation, which is just as dangerous as being too cold. Signs of overheating include gaping, or opening its mouth wide in order to lose heat, floppiness when picked up and also feeling hot to the touch. Never feed a cold hedgehog since they depend on body warmth to help with digestion.
Substitute the bulb for a red bulb so that the baby is not constantly blinded by the light. Red bulbs commonly come in 20W, 25W, or 40W ratings. Place the heat source at one end of the box, which will allow the baby to move to the cooler end if it gets too hot.
An alternative could be shredded newspaper, though keep in mind this could be a fire risk.
This may take a few minutes. Repeat this procedure before and after every feed, as these are the times when it is most likely to go to the bathroom.
If the baby is still with its mother, handling could cause the dam to reject her baby. So minimize stroking until it spends time in a different part of the bed, away from its mother.
Milton should be diluted in water. Immerse the feeding equipment in the solution for at least half an hour. Rinse the equipment well with fresh water prior to use to remove any traces of the sterilizing agent.
A suggested routine is an early morning feed, a lunchtime feed, a late afternoon feed, and a bedtime feed. Don’t forget to wipe your hog’s bottom before and after every feed!
Cow’s milk is a poor substitute for hedgehog milk, but goat’s milk is a passable alternative.
Your hedgehog is programmed to expect warm milk from its mother, so it will likely refuse cold milk. Much like feeding a human baby, warm the milk to just above body temperature and test it by dropping some of the milk onto the back of your hand. If it feels pleasantly warm, the temperature is correct.
If it doesn’t smell the milk and take the hint, try touching the drop of milk to its lips. If your hog is hungry, this will usually trigger its suckling reflex.
If the milk flows too quickly from the teat, it will flood its mouth and spill out around its lips. The milk usually flows too quickly if the hole in the teat is too large, in which case, you should start again with a fresh teat and a smaller hole.
As it continues to grow and get hungry between milk feeds, the chance of supplementing its calorie intake with some hedgehog friendly morsels will be increasingly appealing to it.
This wormer can be gently syringed into the hedgehog’s mouth, giving it a chance to swallow each mouthful. [11] X Research source Practical Wildlife Care. Les Stocker. Blackwell Science {“smallUrl”:“https://www. wikihow. com/images/thumb/d/dd/Care-for-a-Baby-Hedgehog-Step-25. jpg/v4-460px-Care-for-a-Baby-Hedgehog-Step-25. jpg”,“bigUrl”:"/images/thumb/d/dd/Care-for-a-Baby-Hedgehog-Step-25. jpg/aid5644058-v4-728px-Care-for-a-Baby-Hedgehog-Step-25. jpg",“smallWidth”:460,“smallHeight”:345,“bigWidth”:728,“bigHeight”:546,“licensing”:"<div class="mw-parser-output">
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A kitchen scales will do but line it well with a disposable kitchen towel and disinfect it well after weighing your hog. Hedgehogs can carry some diseases that don’t make them sick but could infect people, such as salmonella, so if you are worried about disease, dispose of the scales after weighing your hog. The dose of Panacur is 50 mg for every 1 kg of body weight, repeated once a month. An average hedgehog weighs between 400-500 g, requiring 20 to 25 mg of Panacur in solution. This is equivalent to 0. 2 to 0. 25 ml of the 10% solution. [12] X Research source Practical Wildlife Care. Les Stocker. Blackwell Science
Hedgehogs are illegal in some states because some species can transmit the highly infectious Foot and Mouth Disease. As well, should the hedgehog escape into the wild, it could pose a theoretical risk to cloven-footed animals (cattle, goats, sheep) and impact local agriculture.
