Hi H.mac
I am pleased to hear the little one is still ok.
I don’t have any actual experience of caring for underweight hoglets (other than for a night or two) but have picked up a bit of information from the Forum, etc. The problem is the experts in this area are probably all extremely busy with large numbers of hoglets to look after. To save repeating myself, you might like to look at: https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/advice-please-tiny-hog/ where I copied some information from Stef and included another link.
Also: https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/forums/topic/allowing-hibernation-in-up-to-weight-rescue/
To my inexpert mind, 30g in a week doesn’t sound very much for a little one and I wonder whether it would be worth getting it checked out, at least, for internal parasites.
I can understand why you don’t want to disturb the little one too much, but have always understood that ‘confined’ hogs should be cleaned out daily. Apart from the mess, they seem to be very good at spilling water and potentially making their bedding wet. If you have another prepared box to put him/her in while you are cleaning out, it shouldn’t upset him/her too much.
I have also picked up that it is probably too late to release a hog into the wild until the Spring, now, especially as the winter weather seems to have set in. Even when the hoglet reaches the 600g weight, I think you will need to keep him/her in and keep feeding and watering.
Good luck. I hope all goes well.
Hi Hoglet
Sorry to hear the little one you found didn’t make it. Sadly, even with expert rehabilitators, not all the hoglets will survive.
Sad to hear that your local vets won’t treat wildlife. I always thought they all did, although I suspect they wouldn’t go to such lengths as a hedgehog rehabilitator might go and I wouldn’t expect them to house them.
Hi Jens
The following is an extract from
http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/hedgehogs.html#population
“….Hedgehogs have a propensity for eating almost anything and will readily consume high fat foods (e.g. cat food, processed meats, etc.) put out in gardens and if offered in captivity. Hedgehog metabolism is geared to the digestion of high protein invertebrate prey and unrestricted access to high-fat foods can result in fatty liver disease, obesity and coronary complications as is seen among humans….”
So, from that, I would think probably not and that good protein is better. Their metabolism would be geared up to converting that into the particular types of fats which they need to survive and recover from hibernation.
There is loads of other interesting information about hedgehogs on that site, if you are interested.
