Our (soon-to-be) New Baby!

Do you remember a while back when I saw that wild hedgehog outside and was writing about how much I’ve always wanted an African Pygmy Hedgehog?

Well it all started a few years ago when a friend of mine got one and I was flooded with photos. Links to it are in the earlier post I linked to, too lazy to re-link. Anyhow, at the time I looked into finding a breeder here in NL but had absolutely no luck whatsoever. After a few months of searching I gave up and figured it just wasn’t mean to be.

After seeing George, our wild hedgehog, and thinking some more about it… I decided to try to look into it again.

I sent out many emails and the results were pretty much the same as the last time. Either the breeders I contacted had given up breeding them or they just didn’t get back to me at all. The breeders in the UK (understandably) don’t ship that far and that left only one option.

Germany.

I found a breeder near Leipzig, Germany who had a baby for us. When we looked at the map we realized that this place is nearly to the border of POLAND! Eeep!

I had also been in contact with another breeder who lived just across the border, which is about a 3 hour drive from here… but he had no babies. They were friends though and they suggested that the far away breeder take the hoglet (that’s what they are called when they are babies, hoglets.. how cute is that) to his place where we could go pick him up.

Awesome!!

So after some more emails, photos, phone calls and questions… we picked out a baby.

Is he cute or WHAT?! He’s an Algerian Chocolate African Pygmy Hedgehog and I think he’s positively adorable.

It took us a few days to think of a name for him, which we had to do before getting him so the breeder could put his name on the papers. As usual, I sort of talked to myself until a name jumped out at me.

Hmmm what can we name him.
He’s chocolate colored, maybe something with that?
Chip?
Cookie?
Too cutesie…
He’s pointy.
Prickles?
Sticky?
Pokey?
No, that would have been done already.
Baby hedgies are called hoglets, that’s cute.
Hoglet
Hoglet…
Hog..
Hog…
HARLEY!!

So that is what we’ve named him… Harley. I think it’s kind of cute, not to mention fitting, calling a hog – Harley.

Not wanting to make the same mistake twice, getting a pet without knowing how to care for it properly, I have been scouring the web for info on these little creatures and how to care for them. The best info I’ve found was on a forum for chinchilla and hedgehog owners called Chins & Quills. The forum basically consists of a mixture of hedgehog pet owners and breeders, so there is a mass of info to be found there.

On Saturday we went on a hunt for a cage for him. I thought it would be good to get a cage that fit on top of the stand we had our old aquarium on. Which was approx 60 x 40 cm…. and we found one that seemed suitable.

After posting on the forum about it I was told that it was too small because hedgies need a much larger wheel for running than the regular hamster wheels, so that cage wouldn’t allow room for it. Also, wire bottoms don’t work well for them because of their small feet… I also CUT MYSELF when trying to pick it up! The ends of the wires are really sharp and I gave myself a long scrape on the inside of my arm above my elbow. It bled like a bitch and I really wanted to return it then!

So, we went back with the cage and returned it for store credit.

After being in every pet store I knew of in Rotterdam (which I’m sure isn’t even close to the amount there actually are), I couldn’t find a cage I liked to save my life. So I started looking online. I found an online shop that had a BIGASS double decker cage for only 10 – 15 euros more than we paid for the first one…. even though it’s at least 3x as big.

Here you can see the two cages side by side… The one on the left is the first storebought cage next to a 1kg bottle of ketchup for size comparison, the one on the right is the one we found on the online shop next to our 180L aquarium.

The size difference is massive!

As you can see in the pics, there is an opening in the top cage which a ramp attaches to that he can climb to go from one level to the next. This will have to be enclosed, as hedgies aren’t that hardy and a fall like that could hurt him, but that’s minor DIY.

We will probably replace the wire with wide ferret tubing or dryer tubing, which seems to be popular among the hedgie owner crowd. We’re still thinking about it… but knowing Xander he’ll come up with something clever.

We definately got way more for our money through this online shop than we did at our local ‘superstore’.

Due to not being able to order cool hedgie shit online because nobody on this side of the pond carries it… I’ve had to resort to making it myself! After finding some instructions on the C&Q forums I’ve made my first hedgie bag!

It’s a little baggie about 20 x 30 cm that is sewn specially so none of the seams are on the outside. It’s fleece on the inside and cotton on the outside and from what I hear hedgehogs just love to burrow inside them and curl up to sleep.

I had to sew it by hand, since I don’t have or know how to use a sewing machine… but I think it came out pretty well! It took me about 3-4 hours to make from start to finish.

Hopefully Harley will like it!

Now we just have to get him, which is proving to be a bit difficult because while the breeder we are actually getting him from is great for getting back to us… her breeder friend that agreed to be our middle man is NOT. He doesn’t return my mails and is making it quite difficult for us to arrange a time to pick him up, which is highly irritating for me… as anyone who knows me knows I’m not the most patient person on earth.

With any luck I’ll have an update soon with him actually being here with us, rather than more frustration about trying to arrange the pickup.

I hate when people don’t return emails… GRRR!