The hedgehog is a wild animal found in Europe, Africa and Asia. This small nocturnal mammal is not a common pet, but lately more and more people have a hedgehog as a pet.
Whether you have started raising hedgehogs or if you have found them orphans, it is important that you know how to care for newborns as they are very sensitive and delicate animals.
In this article on our site we are going to explain in detail what are the care for newborn hedgehogs:
The baby hedgehogs
A pregnant female will give birth to her litter after 4 to 6 weeks of gestation. The litter is generally composed of 2 to 7 pups, they are said to be altricial pups because they are born blind, with closed ear canals, almost hairless and with very little hair. mobility: they must continue to mature after birth to have the characteristics of an adult, this implies an important learning.
The mother and her calves must be housed in a plastic or cardboard boxwith vegetable hay-type substrate
Newly hatched hedgehogs have about 100 spines under their skin, which is greatly expanded by water, protecting the fragile spines that will emerge as the water is absorbed. The first layer of spines is whitish, the second appears about 36 hours later and is more pigmented.
After 11 days of life, the little hedgehogs will be able to curl up into a ball, it is their only defense mechanism and they will start to perform the typical anointing behavior of smearing with saliva after smelling and nibbling on an object with a new smell.
They will open their eyes in around 18-21 days. They are naturally weaned by the mother at around 4-6 weeks of age, depending on the size of the litter. At 10 months they will reach sexual maturity.
- Suitable room temperature
- 24-30°C
- Target relative humidity
- 40%
- Gestation
- about 38 days
- Birth weight
- 10-18 grams
- Adult weight
- Female: from 300 to 600 grams
- Male: from 400 to 600 grams
- Deciduous teeth
- Starts at 18 days
- Completed at 9 weeks
- Permanent Teeth
- Starts at 9 weeks
- Completed at 4 months
Caring for newborns who are with their mother
The first thing to ensure that the litter is he althy is to give the necessary care to the mother during pregnancy and after delivery.
Newborns must stay with their mother for a long time. During the first weeks of life it is important to avoid touching the pups as much as possible because we would change their smell, which could lead to cannibalism or rejection of their pups in the mother: we will not disturb the mother and her litter during the 10 days that followbirth.
After delivery, our first task is to make sure that the mother is in perfect he alth: we see that she feeds correctly and that she is taking care of her young. If we observe something abnormal we should go to a veterinarian.
Complications that can occur in childbirth are infections or that a baby remains inside the uterus.
If the hatchlings are well we hear them screeching in the nest. If no noise is heard in the nest for more than 12 hours, we will have to inspect the nest to see if the hatchlings have died or if the mother killed or ate them. To inspect the nest we have to be as discreet and least invasive as possible, we have to avoid touching, so as not to leave an odor that is different from that of the mother or the young and we should try to do it when the mother is outside the nest, feeding. We have to be very careful not to stress the mother or leave an odor, because the consequences could be the death of a litter that was initially well. That is why it is necessary to have very strong reasons to inspect the nest.
To avoid the female having to move away from the nest for a long time during the rearing of the newborns, food and water should be very close to the nest.
We must not touch the young at all: we would impregnate them with an odor that would make the mother identify them as strangers and kill them or push them out of the nest. If something like this happens: we must take the rejected pup with a spoon, previously rubbed with the subtracted from the nest, and place the pup back inside the nest, between its siblings so that it is impregnated with the normal smell of the litter. If the abandonment persists and the hatchling is expelled from the nest again, we will have to raise it and feed it artificially, otherwise it will die from not being fed.
From 10 days of age, we can handle the young if the female allows it. It is better to start handling a single pup and then see the mother's reaction: if this pup is later rejected, we will have to delay handling the other pups to prevent the entire litter from being rejected.
If the mother normally takes care of her young, we won't have to do anything special since nobody cares for and feeds the newborn hedgehogs better than her mother. From one month of age we can offer moistened feed next to the nest so that the mother can wean the young. They are nocturnal animals and we must let them rest during the day.
If the mother dies or rejects her young
If the mother dies or abandons her young, we have two options:
- We have a nurse mother who is more or less in the same stage of lactation and we can try to get her to adopt the orphaned pups.
- We don't have another mother, most likely, so we'll have to raise the newborns and feed them ourselves. We are going to explain how to do it, but it is important to know that it is a difficult task that requires a lot of patience and the pups may die, especially if they are very young.
We will place the hatchlings in a box with a vegetable hay-type substrate, but we will also add fleece. The important thing is to make sure that the temperature is around 25°C because newborns are very sensitive to cold and lose heat very easily and now they no longer have their mother to keep them warm.
Caring for rejected pups or orphans
Next we are going to detail the material that we need to take care of our newborn hedgehogs.
To feed them
- "Mamistop" or "Royal Canin Babycat Milk" or "KMR-Pet Arg" Kitten Milk
- A bottle with a small nozzle, or an eyedropper, a 1mL syringe with a catheter on the tip will also work.
To take care of them
- Sterile gases
- A heat source, such as a thermal blanket for example.
To prepare the milk, we boil water and when it is lukewarm we mix it with the amount of powdered milk that corresponds to its age, as described in the following table.
According to your age we will give you a certain amount of milk at different intervals of time, as detailed below.
Hedgehog feeding day by day
Age of the hedgehog: from 0 to 7 days
- 4mL of water with 2mL of milk
- 0.3 to 0.5 mL every 2 hours day and night
Age of the hedgehog: 8 to 14 days
- 4mL of water with 3mL of milk
- 0.5 to 0.7 mL every 3 hours day and night
Age of the hedgehog: from 15 to 21 days
- 4mL of water with 4mL of milk
- 0, 8 to 1 mL every 3 hours day and night
From 22 days, we will continue until the end of lactation with the same proportion for the preparation of the water-milk mixture. From 22 to 29 days we will give 1mL every 4 hours and during this fourth week we will gradually reduce to 5 daily feedings with a night rest of 7 hours since the pups will begin to eat dry food on their own.
From 30 to 37 days (fifth week) we will go down to 3-4 daily doses with a night break of 8 hours.
From day 38, the pups should feed themselves, 2-3 support feeds can be given during the sixth week, but from the seventh week the pups should feed themselves completely.
To feed them, we can hold the small hedgehogs by the spines on their backs as their mother would or you can hold them between your fingers, they should be horizontal or oblique but the important thing is that Your head isn't tilted back so you don't choke when nursing.
The first few times he may not eat because he is not used to the leak and does not know that the milk is there: we squeeze the leak a little so that a drop of milk comes out and that the little hedgehog can thus notice its taste and will begin to lick the drip, then we will take the opportunity to put the tip of the drip or syringe in his mouth and gently squeeze to make the milk come out. When it has had enough to drink, the newborn hedgehog closes its mouth and moves it away from the leak.
After giving our little hedgehogs a drink of milk, we have to clean them of the traces of milk with a soft cloth moistened with warm water.
After drinking milk it is important to perform a small massage of the perineal area and the belly with a gauze pad soaked in lukewarm water, as their mother would when licking them after suckling. This small massage stimulates intestinal transit to help urination and defecation, they generally defecate at the moment just after the massage. If this is not the case, we do not insist: it will do so at the next milk feeding.
After that, the newborn hedgehogs are tired and we put them in their nest to sleep until the next feed.
From the moment they begin to open their eyes (18 days), we will mix a little dry feed ground into powder with the milk inside the bottle, shake vigorously and leave it to rest for a couple of minutes. We will feed them with this mixture, they can now drink from the bottle, we may have to cut the nipple of the bottle to let the pieces of dry feed present in the milk pass through.
We will gradually increase the amount of dry feed that we will put in the mixture, but with great care: there must always be more milk!
When it comes time to eat on their own, we will place the ground feed with the powdered milk mixture in a jam jar lid, for example, and we will put their snout inside so that they start eating. If they don't eat, we will delay this stage.
When the teeth begin to appear, we will put a few small pieces of unground feed with the milk in the lid.
When it comes time to eat on their own, we will place the ground feed with the powdered milk mixture in a jam jar lid, for example, and we will put their snout inside so that they start eating. If they don't eat, we will delay this stage.
When the teeth begin to appear, we will put a few small pieces of unground feed with the milk in the lid.
Newborn hedgehogs need to gain about 1-2 grams of weight per day the first week, about 3-4 grams during the second week, about 4.5 grams during the third and fourth and about 8 grams from the fourth week to the eighth. Sometimes a slight weight loss is observed during weaning, we should not worry as long as it is slight.
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