Hedgehog Questions; please need help!?

You may wish to invest (all of nine dollars) in an excellent new hedgehog pet care book by veterinarian Sharon Vanderlip titled "Hedgehogs: A Complete Pet Owner's Manual" published by barron's in 2010. It should answer all of your questions correctly. Much of the information on the Internet and in books about pet hedgehog care is outdated, inaccurate, and/or harmful.

Our rescue also has some hedgehog care information on our web site (see below) on the Little flash page.

Please avoid pet stores, wholesalers, backyard breeders, and other breeders that do not breed registered hedgehogs from clear blood lines if you want your hedgehog to live beyond 18 to 24 months and not die from a fatal hereditary disease. The Hedgehog breeders Alliance (HBA) has a very strict Code of Ethics and its member breeders must only breed registered hedgehogs from blood lines clear of fatal illnesses. Pet store hedgehogs usually cost $100 to $200, and HBA breeder member hedgehogs generally cost $150 to $250. Due to the guarantees and follow up care offered by the HBA breeders, it is well worth whatever little more it may cost.

Pet African hedgehogs may breed year round. Some of the smaller HBA breeders may breed all of their moms at one time in the event one mom rejects the babies, there are surrogate moms available to provide the milk bar.

Sterilite Model 1990 bins (Target stores sell them, also available on line) are fine as a cage providing the hedgehog gets plenty of free range time in a hedgehog proof room. Or, with large PVC pipe as a tunnel, you could cut holes in the sides of two Sterilites and have one as an exercise room (with toys and exercise wheel) and the other with a hiding log or house, food and water. Use bowls or waterers, not water bottles, hedgehogs are not rodents and if they break off a tooth trying to get water out of a tube, that tooth is gone forever. We have several hedgehogs here at the rescue missing front fangs. The 1990 Sterilites are semitransparent, lightweight, easy to clean, and only cost about $20.00. A single Sterilite 1990 provides 3.4 square feet of floor space, enough room for a wheel, hiding place, waterer, food bowl, and a toy or two. We do not recommend buying food bowls at pet supply places because almost all of them are made in places like China. A lot of this low fired cheap pottery can leach heavy metals, and a little bit of lead goes a long way in an animal that only weight one pound on average.

Many cats and hedgehogs get along just fine (there are some funny videos on Youtube), but it is never a good idea to allow different species of animals together unsupervised (unless, of course, it's an notable exception, like a Llama guarding sheep).

Here at the rescue, for years we have been primarily feeding Royal Canin dry cat food. The hedgehogs like it and so do our veterinarians. We use several varieties, depending upon age and weight. Young growing hedgehogs and underweight hedgehogs get babycat 34 and average weight hedgehogs get a mixture of Kitten 36 and Selective 34/29. Overweight hedgehogs are given Indoor 40. Sometimes, as a hedgehog grows and we change food (the Babycat is the highest fat and their favorite), fortunately the Babycat is a little greasy and leaves a residue in the food canister. So when transitioning, I rub the Babycat residue on the new food and that has worked just fine.

Best wishes, Z. G. Standing Bear at The Flash and Thelma Memorial Hedgehog Rescue, Inc., in Divide, Colorado USA

Go to pets shop and you will get all answers! Go to internet look for a pet price, you maybe get for free. These pets like worms and other stuff (not apples :D) About cats? That depends on pet and on cats but i think it will be ok. I think you should buy a young because they are the cutest of that age! Good luck !