Nibbles

Nibbles is a cutie! We adopted our little Nibbles in 2017 after she was found abandoned outside a store in a shopping cart during winter. She was a little timid at first, but she knows what she wants and she knows how to use her quills to get it! It took a long time, and a lot of work, but she has become really social. Whenever we go into the animal room, she gets out of bed and greets us. She knows her name and when we ask her how she’s doing, she climbs onto our hands and up our arms to snuggle like a baby.

The Beginning

We always thought it would be fun to have a hedgehog. Several years ago when Tabitha and I were at the veterinarian’s office for one of the rabbits, a teenager came in very upset that her hedgehog may have broken his leg. She became even more emotional when she found out she couldn’t afford the cost of the emergency visit, x-rays, and treatment for her little guy. She was out of options and had to leave the office with her hurt hedgie. I talked to her as she was leaving and offered to pay for his care. She agreed so I gave the nurse authorization to use my credit card for him. We left the office before he was out of the exam room so we don’t know how his appointment went. We’ll never know how he’s doing, but hopefully he recovered well. He was adorable and sweet-tempered and it was at that moment we decided that one day we would have a hedgehog!

Grooming

I can’t say that Nibbles likes taking baths, but she does tolerate them. Tabitha has to bathe her and put coconut oil on her because her skin is sensitive and dries out badly. Colorado’s dry climate doesn’t help with dry skin, not even for hedgehogs! Nibbles also gets her nails trimmed after her baths.

Habitat

Nibbles lives in a Midwest Interactive Guinea Habitat Plus enclosure and has a wheel to run on and lots of toys to play with. Hedgehogs prefer temperatures between 72-80 degrees Fahrenheit. Because we keep our house at 65 degrees during the winter, we have to give her a heat pad and warm sleeping bags to keep her comfortable. She loves hiding in her sleeping bag and only comes out during the day to go to the bathroom and get a drink. Otherwise, it isn’t until the sun starts to go down before she becomes active.

Bedding

We don’t use wood shavings for Nibbles. Instead, we use fleece blankets because they’re easier to keep clean. They can be washed, are festive for different holidays, and they don’t get stuck in her quills.

Litter Box

We use non-clumping, unscented, cat litter in a litter box on one side of Nibbles’ habitat to make it easier to scoop out her bathroom mess every day. She is great at using her litter box so her enclosure stays relatively clean on her sleeping and eating side.

Adaptations

When Nibbles started to show signs of vision loss, we had to take out the ramp in her enclosure so she wouldn’t fall off it. As time goes on, we’re continuing to make adaptations to her enclosure to help her get around without bumping into things.

Food

We feed Nibbles a dry cat food by “I And Love And You”, baked chicken, dried mealworms, fruit, and vegetables. Every time we give her baked chicken she self-anoints.

The Unexpected

When hedgehogs smell a strong scent or eat something they really like, they will self-anoint which means they will foam at the mouth and then rub the foam all over their back. The first time we gave Nibbles baked chicken she was so excited that she self-anointed. We thought she was choking on her chicken and immediately tried to get it out of her mouth. After trying to “save her”, we remembered that it’s a common behavior for hedgehogs to foam at the mouth when they eat something tasty. Nobody really knows why they do it. Some animal behaviorists think it’s a self-defense method to make their quills extra irritating to predators. Whatever the reason, it freaked us out the first time we saw Nibbles do it!

Update

Nibbles crossed Rainbow Bridge on March 17, 2020.