How Do I Care For An Orphaned Baby Hedgehog?

When a baby hedgehog is orphaned, it's sure to die without help by human hands or a surrogate. We were recently asked, “How do I care for an orphaned baby hedgehog?”. For that reason, Quilly talks about how to care for a orphaned hoglet and offers an additional article for further reading.

Hey hedgie fans!

Stephen from Beijing China wrote after he and his wife found an orphaned newborn hedgehog.
He and his wife did a great job, but he was getting concerned that the hoglet hadn’t opened its eyes, so he wrote to us.
He wasn’t positive how old the little one was. My friend Diann wrote him back, but I also wanted to share this story with my fans.

A mama hedgehog can abandon or shun one or more of its hoglets for any number of reasons.
When you’re trying to help an abandoned hoglet, it’s important to provide them with the same type of functions that mama would have.
For example, a new born hedgehog feeds every couple of hours at first.
If you take in an orphaned hedgie, then you have to be prepared to hand feed as often as necessary.
Over several weeks, the feedings get spaced out further and further until they are eventually weaned.

Mama also helps stimulate the digestion system of a hoglet. So you’ll have to do that too.
It’s very similar to burping a human baby but not by patting….. and the burp doesn’t come out the same end either.

My friend Lisa just wrote a great article about how to hand feed a baby hedgehog. You can follow the link below this video to read it.

Once a hoglet's eyes open at about two weeks, they’ll start to explore more and more.
Once they start eating solid foods, they’ll start gaining weight much faster and that’s a very good sign.

And speaking of weight, that’s something that should be measured and recorded daily to make sure they are progressing.
It’s also a good idea to reach out to an experienced breeder or a veterinarian for advice.

It can be pretty scary if you’ve never hand raised a baby hedgehog.
But with the help of Lisa’s article and the advice of a vet or breeder, I’m sure you can do it!

If you have a question or concern about your hedgehog, I’d love to help you out if I can. You can leave a comment below or write me on my website.
If you learned something today, please comment, like, and subscribe.
Until next time….bye for now!

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If you want to learn more about caring for baby and adult hedgehogs and you can't find it on our site, you can ask it in the comments below or on our contact page.

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If you find an orphaned hedgehog and need to know what to do, you'll find this article very helpful: https://heavenlyhedgies.com/how-to-feed-a-baby-hedgehog/