Buying Pet Hedgehogs – Things To Look Out For

Our guest author, Don A Ray, has written a superb article on the different things that you should look out for when buying hedgehogs as pets. My personal favourite species of hedgehog is the African Pygmy Hedgehog.

Pet Hedgehogs – Buying Guide

Pet Hedgehogs – Buying Guide
By Dan A Ray

When buying pet hedgehogs, there are some important things to look for to make sure you have a healthy animal.

Things to check:

Its Nose – your hedgehog’s nose should be black and wet, kind of like a dogs. It should not be running and it should not be making “rasping” noises as this may be a sign of a respiratory infection.

Eyes – should be black and ball like, the eyes should be clear and black, patchy eyes and or cloudy eyes are signs of genetic defects and any hedgehog with these should not be bought. Other signs that the hedgehog is not healthy include, runny, closed, sunken or droopy eyes and any signs of conjunctivitis.

Ears – Ears should be nice and clean. Your new pet may have little nibbles or chunks out of their ears but this is fine as long as they are healed (sometimes a hoglets they can get a little too close to their siblings and be bitten)

Weight – They should be “plump” if you look at their belly there should be a little padding and no loose droopy skin, it should also have fine hair and you should see its little chubby pink belly. Which if it will let you touch it will feel soft and a fluffy.

Legs – Watch your hog have a little walk around, this one is mostly common sense, make sure it is walking as it should, no wobbles or limps or anything like that.

Responses – A healthy animal will be very inquisitive and interested in anything in its proximity, if you put your hand in front of it, that should be enough to get it around you sniffing and maybe having a little lick. It should also start to “huffle” if it gets stressed, so try picking it up and seeing if it balls up and huffles, this is completely normal for pet hedgehogs.

Quills – You want to make sure that there are no missing quills or bald patches, often there are broken quills but this is normal as they can be quite rough and tumble, but they are very resilient animals and can handle a broken quill or two.

Skin – some hedgehogs have little mites at the base of their quills, if they do they will have small scabs at the base, these are easy to see and identify. Never buy a hedgehog with mites.

Testing a pet hedgehogs temperament – there are a few simple things you can do to test that your pet hedgehogs temperament is good and that you get a sociable animal, because nobody wants a moody or shy pet.

Pick up your hog and it should curl into a ball and “huffle”, turn it onto it’s back and see how long it takes to uncurl, a social hog will do this in about 30 seconds, if it does not ball at all then you have an extremely sociable little pet.

Stroke your hedgehog – Will it let you stroke its quills or its belly? What about its feet? Most hogs will not let you do this without curling up, however if it does then that’s a fantastic sign.

Put it on the floor- When you put it down, a sociable hog will uncurl and start sniffing things almost immediately. Some will curl up and huffle and for a bit but if they do this for around 2 minutes or more then that is a sign that your hog may not be the most sociable.

Dan Ray

Pet Hedgehogs

Hedgehogs

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_A_Ray

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So, if you have a pet hedgehog, then why not leave a comment below? We’d love to hear from you!